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Subject: Re: Installation data under "~/Downloads/cygwin/"
From: Warren Young <wyml AT etr-usa DOT com>
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Date: Mon, 4 May 2015 11:58:04 -0600
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On May 4, 2015, at 11:23 AM, Dr Rainer Woitok <rainer DOT woitok AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
> 
> On Saturday, 2015-05-02 01:35:37 +0300, you wrote:
> 
>> ...
>> You may safely nuke everything that is not your Cygwin installation.
> 
> Well, what precisely IS my Cygwin  installation?  Only the stuff in "C:\
> cygwin\”?

Yes, though I wouldn’t have put it the way Andrey did.  I mean, c:\windows is not your Cygwin installation, but you cannot safely nuke it. :)

The real point is that the Cygwin download directory can be safely nuked.  Keeping it just speeds reinstallation.  If you’re not storing the Cygwin download directory on a NAS or other type of file server for use by multiple computers, you probably don’t need to keep the download directory.

> And how does Cygwin's "setup.exe"  know which version of what
> is already installed?

It reads the database stored as /etc/setup/installed.db.

> What are the "setup.ini"  files under  "C:\Users\Admin\Downloads\
> cygwin\" used for?

Those are databases listing the packages available from the mirror you selected, along with other metadata such as version numbers, dependency info, descriptions, etc.  You can open it in a text editor and see all of this.
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