Cygwin installer could be much more better

Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Ilja Umov]

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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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Josh Hunsaker]

Ilja Umov wrote:

> 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.
>
> <snip>
>
> So there are multiple possibilities to provide reasonable defaults
> and spare users from confusion.
>
> That's probably why MSYS2 is being developed

I'm going to pop some popcorn and wait for the response from cgf of
this one... ;-)

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Christopher Faylor]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 09:47:39PM -0700, Josh Hunsaker wrote:
>Ilja Umov wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> So there are multiple possibilities to provide reasonable defaults
>> and spare users from confusion.
>>
>> That's probably why MSYS2 is being developed
>
>I'm going to pop some popcorn and wait for the response from cgf of
>this one... ;-)

Heh.

Ur, something about Thursday, cats?  Pragmatically speaking...

Open source!  BLODA?

Sorry.  I've got nuthin'.

cgf

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Steven Penny]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Ilja Umov wrote
> That's probably why MSYS2 is being developed:
> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2

Well I have to say I was skeptical until I saw this

    $ bash --version
    GNU bash, version 4.2.45(1)-release (x86_64-pc-msys)

However this distribution is huge

    $ du -hs 'C:\cross64'
    763M    C:\cross64

Do they have some kind of installer/package manager yet?

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Steven Penny]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 12:57 AM, Steven Penny wrote
> However this distribution is huge
>
>     $ du -hs 'C:\cross64'
>     763M    C:\cross64

Well I found this for a start

http://sf.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/x86_64

    $ du -hs 'C:\msys64'
    168M    C:\msys64

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Marco Atzeri]

On 29/01/2014 07:57, Steven Penny wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Ilja Umov wrote
>> That's probably why MSYS2 is being developed:
>> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2
>
> Well I have to say I was skeptical until I saw this
>
>      $ bash --version
>      GNU bash, version 4.2.45(1)-release (x86_64-pc-msys)
>
> However this distribution is huge
>
>      $ du -hs 'C:\cross64'
>      763M    C:\cross64
>
> Do they have some kind of installer/package manager yet?
>


"This page documents the instructions for setting up a Windows build 
using ​msys2, which is a fairly complete build of MinGW + the msys 
tools. [cut].
It's also smaller and has a convenient package manager, pacman."

I like the "pacnam" name.

However, coming back to the original request:

Cygwin includes, like any Linux/BSD distrubution, a large amount
of packages of all different categories:
- compilers (C, fortran, C++..)
- script (Bash, Perl, Python,...)
- MAth (Octave, glpk, R, GMP, ...)
- Simulation (ngspice, gnucap...)
- Database (sqlite, postgres, DB,..)
- X Window system
...

No sane one need all of them (~ 11 GB as Warren recently tested
http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2014-01/msg00273.html )

While Crome as single application has a single click setup,
if you want to add any of the several ADD-ONs you need to
add separatly.





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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Christopher Faylor]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 08:28:33AM +0100, Marco Atzeri wrote:
>On 29/01/2014 07:57, Steven Penny wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Ilja Umov wrote
>>> That's probably why MSYS2 is being developed:
>>> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Building/Preparation/Windows/MSYS2
>>
>> Well I have to say I was skeptical until I saw this
>>
>>      $ bash --version
>>      GNU bash, version 4.2.45(1)-release (x86_64-pc-msys)
>>
>> However this distribution is huge
>>
>>      $ du -hs 'C:\cross64'
>>      763M    C:\cross64
>>
>> Do they have some kind of installer/package manager yet?
>>
>
>
>"This page documents the instructions for setting up a Windows build 
>using ???msys2, which is a fairly complete build of MinGW + the msys 
>tools. [cut].
>It's also smaller and has a convenient package manager, pacman."

It should be pretty obvious that discussion about MSYS is off-topic.
Please stop.

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[iljau]

I'll try to explain situation from my perspective,
Hoping it will be of of interest at least to somebody.


If I need some unix-y things, I usually end up using:
http://www.vagrantup.com/

But using a virtual machine may be a bit too much overhead sometimes.


(As I couldn't find any good intro/tutorial pages for following projects, 
direct links to installers are provided, sorry. But if I understand
correctly,
then they are somehow related to: http://mingw-w64.sourceforge.net/

For installing gcc/g++ there's a nice installer:
http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mingwbuilds/mingw-builds-install/mingw-builds-install.exe

But sometimes you'll need some libraries as well, then there's :
http://skylink.dl.sourceforge.net/project/mingw/Installer/mingw-get-setup.exe

But sometimes those aren't unix-y enough, then you'd end up using cygwin.
And it just doesn't feel so good.

Blame projects mentioned above for setting expectations too high. ;-D

On 2014-01-29 09:28 Christopher Faylor wrote:
> It should be pretty obvious that discussion about MSYS is off-topic. 
> Please stop. 

I'll do it. 

And again, I'd like to thank all of you for your attention.

--
Ilja Umov
https://iljau.me/



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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 1/29/2014 3:40 PM, iljau wrote:
<snip>

> On 2014-01-29 09:28 Christopher Faylor wrote:
>> It should be pretty obvious that discussion about MSYS is off-topic.
>> Please stop.
>
> I'll do it.

Ah, right.  Of course Chris meant "Please stop after Ilja gets his last
comment in."  Now that that's happened, MSYS discussion can stop. ;-)

-- 
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Steven Penny]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:21 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote
> Ah, right.  Of course Chris meant "Please stop after Ilja gets his last
> comment in."  Now that that's happened, MSYS discussion can stop. ;-)

You want some on-topic? Ok here goes

Bash 4.2 has been out almost 3 years now, any roadmap for an upgrade? I wouldnt
want Cygwin to become the next you-know-who.

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 1/29/2014 4:48 PM, Steven Penny wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:21 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote
>> Ah, right.  Of course Chris meant "Please stop after Ilja gets his last
>> comment in."  Now that that's happened, MSYS discussion can stop. ;-)
>
> You want some on-topic? Ok here goes
>
> Bash 4.2 has been out almost 3 years now, any roadmap for an upgrade?

It's the Cygwin bash maintainer that will have to answer that.  Eric,
any thoughts?

-- 
Larry

_____________________________________________________________________

A: Yes.
 > Q: Are you sure?
 >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
 >>> Q: Why is top posting annoying in email?

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Christopher Faylor]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 03:48:17PM -0600, Steven Penny wrote:
>On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 3:21 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote
>> Ah, right.  Of course Chris meant "Please stop after Ilja gets his last
>> comment in."  Now that that's happened, MSYS discussion can stop. ;-)
>
>You want some on-topic? Ok here goes
>
>Bash 4.2 has been out almost 3 years now, any roadmap for an upgrade? I wouldnt
>want Cygwin to become the next you-know-who.

This isn't off-topic but it's one of those terrible things that we do
here which can result in people running screaming in the streets gnawing
at their own limbs.

Please just start a new thread if you have something new to say.

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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Andrey Repin]

Greetings, Ilja Umov!

> 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.

Google chrome is an ONE package.
Cygwin setup installs about a ton of them.
There's no confusion, there's options.


--
WBR,
Andrey Repin (anrdaemon@yandex.ru) 29.01.2014, <20:22>

Sorry for my terrible english...


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Re: Cygwin installer could be much more better

[Ilja Umov]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 6:24 PM, Andrey Repin <anrdaemon@yandex.ru> wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Google chrome is an ONE package.
> Cygwin setup installs about a ton of them.
> There's no confusion, there's options.

Chrome has `about:flags`. I sometimes like to toy around with them too.

But again, I usually don't.

Picture of `about:flags`, _(which redirects to `chrome://flags/`)_:
http://imgur.com/0zO69ZF

--
Ilja Umov
https://iljau.me/

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