diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index a34da9cfec..c330a7fbf1 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -329,3 +329,33 @@ Occasionally other changes to `master` might mean that your pull request cannot
 be merged automatically.  In this case you may need to rebase your branch on a
 more recent `master`, resolve any conflicts, and `git push --force` to update
 your branch so that it can be merged automatically.
+
+## Building on Windows
+
+Most developers build on Linux. Building on Windows is possible under Cygwin.
+When installing Cygwin from https://www.cygwin.com/, include the developer
+tools to get GNU make.
+
+First (before npm install), to avoid file permission problems between Windows
+and Cygwin, edit Cygwin's /etc/fstab file to disable ACLs like this
+`none /cygdrive cygdrive binary,noacl,posix=0,user 0 0`
+
+Python is normally installed with Cygwin so need not be installed separately.
+By default Cygwin will use its own version of Python rather than Window's,
+so the Python modules should be installed for Cygwin's Python.
+
+The build targets `check-deps`, `serve`, `lint`, `build`, `test`, `check` and
+`host-examples` described above should all work. `host-examples` takes quite a
+while to run. If a target does not run properly first time, try it again.
+
+Currently, Firefox fails to run http://localhost:3000/build/examples
+from make serve, but Chrome and Internet Explorer will.
+
+Microsoft Visual Studio's javascript debugger may be used to debug the
+build/hosted/your-branch/examples. It will be convenient to set
+build/hosted/your-branch/examples/index.html as the startup page.
+
+Your ol3 source tree need not be under the Cygwin root.
+if you checkout to c:/ol3 then you can build under Cygwin at /cygdrive/c/ol3 .
+However, keep the path to the ol3 files short otherwise you may see
+`ENAMETOOLONG` errors.
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 35e843a1f2..77c6e55ad7 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -23,7 +23,11 @@ CHECK_EXAMPLE_TIMESTAMPS = $(patsubst examples/%.html,build/timestamps/check-%-t
 
 TASKS_JS := $(shell find tasks -name '*.js')
 
-CLOSURE_LIB = $(shell node -e 'process.stdout.write(require("closure-util").getLibraryPath())')
+ifeq (CYGWIN,$(findstring CYGWIN,$(OS)))
+  CLOSURE_LIB = $(shell cygpath -u $(shell node -e 'process.stdout.write(require("closure-util").getLibraryPath())'))
+else
+  CLOSURE_LIB = $(shell node -e 'process.stdout.write(require("closure-util").getLibraryPath())')
+endif
 
 ifeq ($(OS),Darwin)
 	STAT_COMPRESSED = stat -f '  compressed: %z bytes'
diff --git a/tasks/generate-info.js b/tasks/generate-info.js
index d79bb67eee..1ba741ed70 100644
--- a/tasks/generate-info.js
+++ b/tasks/generate-info.js
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@ var spawn = require('child_process').spawn;
 var async = require('async');
 var fse = require('fs-extra');
 var walk = require('walk').walk;
+var isWindows = process.platform.indexOf('win') === 0;
 
 var sourceDir = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'src');
 var externsDir = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'externs');
@@ -14,6 +15,12 @@ var externsPaths = [
 ];
 var infoPath = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'build', 'info.json');
 var jsdoc = path.join(__dirname, '..', 'node_modules', '.bin', 'jsdoc');
+
+// on Windows, use jsdoc.cmd
+if (isWindows) {
+ jsdoc += '.cmd';
+}
+
 var jsdocConfig = path.join(
     __dirname, '..', 'config', 'jsdoc', 'info', 'conf.json');
 
@@ -92,6 +99,17 @@ function getNewer(date, newer, callback) {
     callback(new Error('Trouble walking ' + sourceDir));
   });
   walker.on('end', function() {
+  
+    /**
+     * Windows has restrictions on length of command line, so passing all the
+     * changed paths to a task will fail if this limit is exceeded.
+     * To get round this, if this is Windows and there are newer files, just
+     * pass the sourceDir to the task so it can do the walking.
+     */
+    if (isWindows) {
+        paths = [sourceDir].concat(externsPaths);
+    }
+  
     callback(null, newer ? paths : []);
   });
 }