Subject: Re: adding to and upgrading a cygwin installation...
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 18:31:19 -0700

e-head wrote:

> > > Also, is there any easy way to essentially just "upgrade" all of your
> > > currently installed cygwin packages ?
> >
> > setup.exe -R c:\cygwin -s ftp://mirrors.rcn.net -n -q
> >
> > works for me.  I have is as a shortcut in my Startup folder, so it runs with
> > every reboot.  (c:\cygwin is where cygwin is installed;
> > ftp://mirrors.rcn.net is my preferred mirror, change both as appropriate for
> > you.)  See http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2002-11/msg01490.html for more.
> >
> > - Barry
> 
> Hi,
> this little upgrade tip seems to be working great (it's not finished
> yet) ... however, i have no idea what it is doing.

I have to say that running setup.exe unattended like that in an
automated way is just insane, in my opinion.  It may work but it's not
really supported, we're not at the state where you can really expect to
pull down periodic updates that way and not expect surprises every so
often.

> i would like to simply upgrade all of the packages i currently have
> installed. not install anything new, not uninstall anything i already
> have.

If you run setup.exe and select nothing but 'Next' on each page, then
that's just what you should get.  Why do you have belief otherwise?

> i couldn't find any info on command line switches to setup.
> setup -h,--help, /? did not show anything.
> further, i couldn't find any documentation on the cygwin site about
> this.

That's because they're unsupported.  They're only documented in the
mailing list archives and the source code.

> is there any way to "grap" single packages this way ?

(...assuming here you meant "grab" ...)

Run setup, find the individual package you want, click anywhere in the
"New" column to cycle from "Skip" to the current version.  If the
default "Category" view is scary then switch to "Full" or "Not
installed" if you prefer and you'll see them as a flat list instead of a
tree. Why don't you ask your setup.exe questions directly rather than
skirting the issue by trying to use other nonsupported methods for
getting packages?  Using setup in this manner is the only current sane
way to select packages.

Brian

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