The link for mingw:
http://www.mingw.org/

Then you need to obtain CVS and SSH:
You need to create a HOME directory. To do this, create a directory (I
use C:\HOME). You will need this directory for SSH keys, and for WinCVS.
Then for Windows 9x/Me users, you should add "SET HOME=C:\HOME" to
autoexec.bat (or other path as appropriate). For NT+ users, add the HOME
variable to your environment variables in the system control panel.

You can download WinCVS here:
http://www.cvsgui.org/
Get version 1.2:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10072&release_id=24467

Then you need SSH. The zip is attached to the email.
Uncompress into some directory. I use C:\HOME\BIN.
SSH _NEEDS_ to be in your path. This is the hard part for most people I
get asked this a lot. In Win9x, append ";C:\HOME\BIN" to the "SET PATH",
in NT+, create a variabled called PATH with "C:\HOME\BIN", or append it to
the semicolon delimited list. You should be able to run SSH from the
command line just by typing SSH anytime.

Next, you need to register for a SourceForge account:
http://sourceforge.net/account/register.php

Then, I need to add that person to the project as a developer. Once they
do that they should log into our CVS: ssh -l username
cvs.egstank.sourceforge.net

It will boot them out, but then their CVS will be "activated". They only
ever have to do this once for all SF projects, so if they already have an
SF account they need not do this again.

Now, set up CVS in WinCVS:
In preferences, Admin, the CVSROOT is:
gillius@cvs.egstank.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/egstank
Select SSH authentication.
Uncheck "checkout read-only"
Enable TCP compression
In ports, choose "ssh" to be an alternate rsh name
In the WinCVS tab, choose your home directory.
Then, hit OK, and pick Create->checkout module...
egstank is the full path to the project.
Choose the folder a directory called egstank will be created in.
All of the other tabs should be set properly if the previous actions in
prefs were taken. At this time a command prompt will pop up BEHIND WinCVS
and WinCVS will appear to be waiting (fish swimming). Type password
blindly into the window and press enter. Files should be checked out.

Now, the user should download DOxygen. Thankfully an easy step, as it
comes with an installer, which sets up the paths and everything.
http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/index.html
ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/users/dimitri/doxygen-1.2.18-setup.exe

Now setup WinCVS to check out GNE (networking library). Note that once
you checkout, the settings I think will have little or no effect... I
forget how exactly this works since I'm the admin for gnelib and egstank,
so I use SSH for both.

But for GNE, you can change where you saw egstank to gnelib, and turn off
SSH authentication (check to use passwd authentication). They may have to
hit admin/login and supply a blank password to init it. Then they should
be able to check out gnelib.

GNE requires HawkNL installed to run. The GNE source distribution has a
precompiled version of HawkNL for MSVC.NET and for mingw. There is a new
version out. You can find it at: http://www.hawksoft.com/hawknl/

But I haven't tried it yet.

Anyways one should be able to download the GNE files from SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26347

From here they can download the zip source file. In this source zip
there should be a Hawk_bin directory. They should copy that directory
into their GNE distro and ONLY that directory. The path structures should
match. It will probably easier to use that, then to compile HawkNL.

Next, the user may be able to run installmsvc and installmingw if they
have ming or MSVC6 or MSVC.NET. All of these require some environment
variables which I'm pretty sure are there after default installs of these
compilers. They will try to guide the user past problems, though. If
doxygen was installed properly, it should make docs for GNE.

LIBRARIES:
GNE and HawkNL have already been described.
There's also Allegro:
(unoffical but blessed by the creators site)
http://www.allegro.cc/files/index.html?&request=1032406010&

That has some instructions, and binary builds. The complicated part about
Allegro is getting the DirectX headers. If a person has the full DirectX
SDK version 7 or higher, they don't need to use the hacks there. Also, I
just remembered, Allegro requires mingw to build, even WITH MSVC. Maybe
it is best to provide a complete install package for everyone heh.

Next, AllegroGL:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/allegrogl
It also uses a makefile structure, like Allegro does. As for Allegro and
HawkNL, there's a few new versions out, and AllegroGL has been the only
one that's given us problems with compiling against new versions... so see
if the latest one works.

Next, AllegroMP3:
http://nekros.freeshell.org/delirium/almp3.php
http://raythe.sytes.net/TheDeath/almp3.zip

This should compile easily with an MSVC workspace (.DSW) file. With
mingw, it probably uses make, I'm sure.

As for the GUI lib, we will be worrying about that later. It is called
MASkinG, if you want to try to look it up.

Whew, that should be it for now... I hope I got it all.

Jason