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Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 15:20:48 -0700
From: Brian Dessent <brian AT dessent DOT net>
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To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Why is setup.exe so difficult?  Am I missing something?
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Matt England wrote:

> * Installing/updating a subversion package
> 
> I want to install or update a subversion package for my cygwin system.  I
> tried for about 15 minutes to figure out how to do this (and get a specific
> rev of svn--1.2.3-1) to no avail.  The organization of the modes and views
> and lists of setup.exe to be are extremely unintuitive--I've never
> understood them, and I think I've been using cygwin for about 5 years
> now.  It's not like I'm a rookie.

It would help if you told us the exact steps that you tried that did not
work.  This is how it's supposed to be done:

1. Run setup, select install from internet, select a mirror, etc. until
you're on the package selection step.
2. Press the View button once to go to the Full view.
3. Scroll down to the subversion package, click on its little "cycle
glyph" until the desired version is in the "New" column.
4. Press next and finish the rest of the steps.

An alternative to #2 is to leave the view on Category and expand the
Devel category, which contains subversion.

If you don't see subversion in the list then it means the mirror you
selected is not a full mirror.  It is my understanding that all the
mirrors presented in the stock list are supposed to be full mirrors that
are all within a day of being up-to-date.  I've never personally
experienced this scenario of a broken mirror but apparently people run
into it.

In general there is rarely a need to mess with the "keep/prev/curr/exp"
radio buttons, so if they confuse you just pretend they don't exist and
you should be fine.  Also, if you're using the latest version of setup
you should get tooltips if you hover over these things that explain what
they mean.

> * Duplication a cygwin environment from machine to machine
> 
> This is critical for development consistency.  We had to download the
> entire package set,

This is possible and takes a bit of work, but is not that difficult. 
There are several ways of doing this, and they are all discussed in the
mailing list archives.

> * Figure out which things to install and which ones to not
> 
> This is the worst thing of them all.  I always feel like an idiot whenever
> I step into setup.exe

If you want package "X" just select "X".  You don't have to know or care
what packages are needed to support "X", as they will be selected for
you when you want "X".  E.g. if you want gcc, select "gcc-core" (and
optionally "gcc-g++" if you also need C++ support.)  If you want perl,
select "perl".  Again if you could give a specific example of something
you were trying to accomplish and what you tried that was not
successful, it would help us understand what is the most confusing.

Brian

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