Re: update just ruby on offline cygwin installation

["Larry Hall (Cygwin)" <reply-to-list-only-lh@cygwin.com>]

Just to add a bit beyond what Andrey has already said.

On 08/11/2014 08:03 PM, LMH wrote:

<snip>

> The problem I have is that cygwin has a tendency to remove depreciated
> packages when updating. This is an older setup and there are critical
> components in the build that are no longer available in more recent
> cygwin packages. If I let cygwin just do it's thing, it will break far
> more that it will fix. Updating the entire cygwin install would mean
> moving to more recent versions of multiple packages and who knows how
> much time, effort, and resources would be involved in fixing all of
> that. At the moment, the server does exactly what it needs to in its
> current configuration, so there is little sense in wading into the
> quagmire of updates when there is little or noting to be gained.

Obsolete packages don't disappear all that often really.  Most likely any
package that is obsolete has just been marked as such and doesn't show up in
the list of packages by default.  If you want to see them, just uncheck
the "Hide obsolete packages" control under the list of packages on the
"Select Packages" page of setup*.exe.

> There are some post processing steps to what the server does that need a
> newer version of ruby. It would be nice to have to post processing done
> on the same server, but it is not essential. If I can update ruby
> without breaking everything else, than that is worth doing. It is not
> worth attempting to update everything just to add the post processing.

Certainly if you're very concerned about making untested changes to a
working server, you either want to work with a duplicated test version
as Andrey said or you want to off-load the post-processing piece to
another machine that's more up-to-date.  The third alternative I can
think of is that you could try to build a recent version of ruby on
your older installation.  If you have all the dependencies that would
be necessary for that, it could allow you to update ruby without
dragging allot of other useful binaries forward as well.  But this is
not without some amount of risk as well.  And I'm sure you understand
that all of this puts you in the realm of needing to support this
installation yourself.  I expect that's not a big deal to you since
it has been working fine for you and you've been doing this already.
So I'm stating the obvious I'm sure. :-)


<snip>


-- 
Larry

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