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Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 05:42:38 +0100
From: fergus <fergus AT bonhard DOT uklinux DOT net>
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CC: fergus <fergus AT bonhard DOT uklinux DOT net>
Subject: Re: Batch installation, possibly without setup.exe?
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 > if I want to install a version of Cygwin without user
 > interaction (optimally just dropping a bunch of files
 > via unzip), is that feasible?

I do this frequently in order to have Cygwin on a USB stick. Building it 
there using setup would take 2 days (even though it's USB2.0). Copying 
an existing architecture to it takes less than an hour. It works 
perfectly, scores of times.

Build your preferred version on a host machine. Then Yes, as long as the 
zipped package that you are copying from host to target is capable of 
preserving the +R and +S attributes that will be attached to some of the 
individual files.

 > In particular: does setup.exe fiddle with the registry
 > or other files that can't be just overwritten as a whole?

Mainly (entirely?) setup sees to (a) location and (b) mounts. The first 
(a) is attended to by the fact that you are copying a completely 
specified architecture from host to target. However (b) you do need to 
remount your installation once it's in place. You could achieve this 
with a single once-only .bat command tacked on to the un-zipping process.

 > Obviously, one might want to have PATH adjusted, but apart
 > from that?

Why? If your PATH e.g.

     /home/user/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

(or whatever) works on the host, why would you want to change it on the 
target?

After it's done you might want to fiddle with mkpasswd or mkgroup for 
individual users on their individual machines, but it's my experience* 
that you wouldn't actually need to.

* What Works For Me might not, for You. And I might have misunderstood 
what you want.

Fergus



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