Keeping FlightGear (win32) up to date without compiling

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There are three easy steps to keep up with the actual development of FlightGear:

First step:

You can find the latest FlightGear development branch already compiled as a Windows(TM) executable file (fgfs.exe) at ftp://ftp.ihg.uni-duisburg.de/FlightGear/Win32by Frederic Bouvier. There a lot of precompiled binaries, the newest one together with the latest FGRun. There are irregular updates, sometimes even nearly weekly. So check the filename for the latest version. fgfs-win32-20060710.zip tells you that it is the version of July 10, 2006. The download size will be about then 5 MB.

Second step:

It is obligatory to combine a new FlightGear binary mainprogram with the matching FlightGear data not only to get the newest developments but as configuration files or dataformats might have got changed. You have to download the newest data from http://cvs.flightgear.org/cgi-bin/viewvc/viewvc.cgi/data/

At the bottom of the page you will find the link "Download tarball". This is a pretty big amount of bytes (about 1 Gb!) so you should have a fast internet connection. You have to unzip the download before copying it into [YourFlightGearFolder].

Using WinCVS to hold the content of the [data] folder actual:

If you don't want to download all that stuff again and again it is more practical to download information and data about what has changed since the last upgrade, this means using the CVS system.

Using WinCVS to hold the content of the [data] folder actual:

- WinCVS seems to be dead. The internet-page is down.

 Therefore the obsolete part of this article has been deleted by me to avoid 
 FG user irritation and inconvenience.
 27.3. 2008 Georg EDDW

- WinCVS isn't dead- the page is up again and you will find it on the main page


- Using TortoiseCVS with FlightGear

Last Words

Frederic Bouvier and Martin Spott are the provider of the Windows fgfs.exe and fgrun compilations and server space. Frederic is also the author of fgrun. A big “thank you” to them for this service. Keep up with the ongoing development of FlightGear. All the steps described above are very easy to handle if you have read this document carefully. Have much fun with FlightGear!