Re: Setup retaining or saving package selections (was: startxwin/XWin won't start properly)

[Christopher Faylor <cgf-use-the-mailinglist-please@cygwin.com>]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 10:51:57AM -0500, Timares, Brian (Harris) wrote:
>Brian Timares (me! self-replying) wrote:
>>However this discussion more properly belongs on a more general Cygwin
>>list.  I'll see if it makes sense to post a suggestion there.
>
>I found something where cgf says the big reason remembered installs
>aren't done are because it takes someone with the time and skills to do
>it (SHTDI).
><http://www.mail-archive.com/cygwin@cygwin.com/msg62416.html>

That post is five years old and unrelated to the topic at hand.  This
message is referencing the idea to make a windows library for accessing
the cygwin mount table.  We actually pretty much have that now in fact.

But, that message has nothing to do with this.

>I found this
><http://marc.info/?l=cygwin&m=114858695408427&w=2>
>which kinda does what I want.  It is still more trouble than I want, but
>less than giving someone a list of n packages that I've found useful and
>expecting them to go through the list.  Mike, that might be worth a try,
>though I don't know if it would still work.

You're talking about giving someone a file.  So just give them a .bat
file that contains something like:

setup.exe -P openssh,xorg-x11-base,xorg-x11-bin,xterm

and let them run it.  That will pull in all of the listed packages and
any needed dependencies.

>On considering the later link I realize that it might not be 100% as
>simple as just saving out a list, unless installing package X
>automatically and at that point did dependency resolution.

setup.exe handles dependencies.  That's a big part of its job.

>I find discussions of this going back to 2002, but the search for the
>main mail list timed out on me.  Anyway, I have to get back to work so
>I'll try to post to the main list after work.

You can find the discussion by people who don't know about setup.exe
command-line options nearly every month in the cygwin mailing list.

But, anyway, as Larry says, if you don't like the solutions that are
available to do what you want then offering a patch is how you will make
things happen.  I think most of the setup.exe developers are satisfied
with the way things work now and aren't looking to implement something
else.

cgf

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