Re: Is the Cygwin installation process likely to change significantly anytime soon?

[Jonathan Turkanis <technews at kangaroologic dot com>]

Jonathan Turkanis wrote:

> ... Therefore I'd like to know if there are plans to change the installation 
process in the near future. For example, it would be very helpful to know how 
stable the following features of the current installation process are:


Thanks for all the responses to my initial inquiry!

Here's what I've written so far; I'd like to know if there are any errors and 
how it might be improved. I discuss Cygwin in two places, which I've labelled 
"Installing Cygwin" and "Discussion of Cygwin and MinGW."

Best Regards,
Jonathan Turkanis

**** Installing Cygwin ****

To install Cygwin, go to the Cygwin homepage, www.cygwin.com, and follow the 
link "Install Cygwin Now" to download the Cygwin installation program setup.exe. 
Next, run setup.exe. It will ask you to make a series of choices, such as where 
Cygwin should be installed.

---------------------------
I'm explaining the Cygwin installation process in detail because it's a bit 
confusing. The process may have changed by the time you read this, but if it 
has, it will probably have been made easier.
---------------------------

The most important choice you must make is the selection of packages. If you 
have enough disk space and a high-speed internet connection, I recommend that 
you install all of the packages. To do this, click once on the word Default next 
to the word All at the top of the hierarchical display of packages. After a 
possibly long pause, the word Default should change to Install. Now press Finish 
to begin the automatic installation of packages.

If you are short on disk space, or if you have a slow internet connection, you 
can choose a smaller collection of packages. To select all of the development 
tools, click once on the word Default next to the word Devel. Wait for the word 
Default to change to Install, then  press Finish. For an even smaller collection 
of packages, expand the list of development packages by clicking on the + icon 
next to the word Devel. Select the packages gcc-core, gcc-g++, and make by 
clicking on the word Skip, opposite each package, causing it to change to 
Install, and by checking the box under the column labeled Bin? Now press Finish.

When setup.exe completes, the Cygwin installation directory should contain a 
file named cygwin.bat. Running this script will display the Cygwin shell, a 
command-line environment from which you can run gcc, g++, ar, ranlib, dlltool, 
make, and any other utilities you chose to install. The installation process 
adds the bin subdirectory of the Cygwin installation to your PATH environment 
variable, so you can also run these utilities from the Windows shell cmd.exe. 
You will find, however, that the Cygwin shell - a port of the bash shell - is a 
much friendlier environment for running GNU utilities.

**** Discussion of Cygwin and MinGW ****

Cygwin and MinGW represent very different approaches to porting the GNU tools to 
Windows. Cygwin is an ambitious project to produce a Linux-like environment 
hosted by Windows; a remarkable assortment of GNU utilities are available as 
part of the Cygwin distribution. While one of the main goals of Cygwin is to 
facilitate porting GNU applications to Windows, even if you are not UNIX 
developer you may soon come to regard the Cygwin tools as indispensable.

MinGW, which stands for "Minimalist GNU for Windows," is an attempt to provide a 
minimal environment for porting GNU applications to Windows. While the full 
Cygwin installation occupies several Gigabytes, the MinGW distribution is 
relatively small. Among other things, MinGW includes a runtime environment, a 
port of GCC, a port of the GNU archiver and linker — part of the GNU binutils 
package — and a port of the GNU debugger, GDB. It also includes MSYS, a 
command-line environment capable of executing GNU makefiles and configure 
scripts. MSYS will be discussed in "Obtaining GNU make."






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