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From: Ilja Umov <ilja DOT umov AT gmail DOT com>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 06:25:54 +0200
Message-ID: <CAKYyfB08yy5QPk_w2JMPE909s0AK0H-Rmx=c5G4AUYdqLdCVtQ@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Cygwin installer could be much more better
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hi,

there is a certainly a good historical reason why cygwin installer
has so many options. But now one-click installers are so common
(Google Chrome is the best example), it may look rather scary,
especially for beginners.

I did browse a bit though cygwin source code and well, I'm not so
great at C++, that I could help in any meaningful way.

Though I did make a script that downloads and extract list of cygwin
packages (Python>=3.3, because of `.xz` files):
https://github.com/iljau/cyg_fetcher/blob/master/fetch_package_list.py

Didn't quite get to installation part, yet.


Based on my cygwin usage (installing and updating it on multiple
machines) and during process of writing above script I discovered
following:

1) Usually I want to "Install from Internet"

2) Usually "C:\cygwin" is where I want to install it for "All Users".

3) "Local Package Directory" could be just environment variable
    %TMP% or %TEMP%. (Still don't understand difference)

4) Usually "Direct connection" is good.

5) The most reliable mirror is (and the only one that supports https):
   https://mirrors.kernel.org/sourceware/cygwin/

6) Usually I dont want to "Create Icons", especially after update.


So there are multiple possibilities to provide reasonable defaults
and spare users from confusion.

That's probably why MSYS2 is being developed:
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2

Thank you for your attention.

--
Ilja Umov
https://iljau.me

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