WinCoot install and download page

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How to download and install WinCoot?

Since we have an installer there is hardly any manual intervention required to install WinCoot. However if you have a multi-user Windows computer you might want to change a few things. Here is how things are done:
N.B. (1) WinCoot will save your backup structures in a coot-backup directory, which is default under C:\yourWinCootdirectory\coot-backup. This can be changed for every user. It will accumulate a lot of pdb files and should be 'cleaned' occasionally.
N.B. (2) You will need about 500MB of disk space for WinCoot (I hope I can reduce it somehow soon...).

Source code download

You can download the source code from here. However, I cannot garantee that you'll be able to build it on your own MinGW system. An autobuild script help you to do so (build-it-win). Feel free to email me if you have problems and are desperate to do so.

What are the different versions (stable/pre-release version)?

Stable releases are tested official releases (every few month). The pre-release (developer) versions are build every night and are the latest coot versions. Although these are tested they may not be fully functional and contain unknown bugs.

Multi-user Windows computer and single user installation

WinCoot doesn't need to set any environment variables any more but instead uses a .bat file which sets these in runtime. However WinCoot uses 2 directories (environment variables) which could/should be used individually by the user. These are COOT_HOME, which hosts the .coot.py file and .coot-preferences directory, and COOT_BACKUP_DIR, where intermediate, backup pdb files are stored. For a multi-user Windows computer the Administrator might want to change these environment variables in the wincoot.bat file (runwincoot.bat prior to 0.8.8) (by default in C:/yourWinCoot) for every individual user (you obviously need a wincoot.bat file for every user).
The coot state file will be saved in the directory where WinCoot is started from (default is C:/yourWinCoot). For individual users you could change this in the Properties of the WinCoot (desktop) shortcut. Alternatively you start WinCoot (wincoot.bat) from a DOS shell in the directory where you want to work in and the state file to be saved.

The WinCoot environment variables.

This is a list of environment variables WinCoot uses. These are set in runtime when executing wincoot.bat (runwincoot.bat prior to 0.8.8). So there is no need to set any variables. There is no need to change the variables, except COOT_HOME and COOT_BACKUP_DIR for individual users, if required. Feel free to edit the wincoot.bat file.

Environment Variable Name
 Variable Value
 Comment
COOT_HOME C:\WinCoot where .coot.py for personal settings is saved
COOT_BACKUP_DIR
 C:\WinCoot\coot-backup intermediate pdbs are saved here
COOT_REFMAC_LIB_DIR C:\WinCoot\share\lib
COOT_SCHEME_DIR C:/WinCoot/share/coot/scheme only required for guile add-on; needs "/" instead of "\"
COOT_STANDARD_RESIDUES C:\WinCoot\share\coot\standard-residues.pdb
COOT_PIXMAPS_DIR
 C:\WinCoot\share\coot\pixmaps
COOT_RESOURCES_FILE C:\WinCoot\share\coot\cootrc
COOT_DATA_DIR
 C:\WinCoot\share\coot
COOT_REF_STRUCTS C:\WinCoot\share\coot\reference-structures
COOT_PYTHON_DIR
 C:\WinCoot\share\coot\python
COOT_REF_SEC_STRUCTS
 C:\WinCoot\share\coot\ss-reference-structures
GUILE_LOAD_PATH
 C:/WinCoot/share/guile/1.8; C:/WinCoot/share/guile;
C:/WinCoot/share/guile/gtk-2.0; C:/WinCoot/share/guile/gui;
C:/WinCoot/share/guile/www; C:/WinCoot/share/guile/site

 only required for guile Add-on;  needs "/" instead of "\"
SYMINFO C:\WinCoot\share\coot\syminfo.lib
PATH   (edit, not new)
 C:\WinCoot\bin; C:\WinCoot\lib
 this is added to your PATH

Last modified 10/01/2023