I need an offline installer with most of the utilities commonly needed. Somehow the default installer confuses me with all its package selection. I installed Cygwin but I can't find the diff utility after the installation.
views:
5601answers:
7
+5
A:
If all you want is the UNIX command line tools I'd suggest not installing Cygwin. Cygwin wants to turn your Windows PC into a UNIX Workstation which is why it likes to install all its packages.
Have a look at GnuWin32 instead. It's Windows ports of the command line tools and nothing else. Here is the installer for the GnuWin32 diff.exe. There are offline installers for all the common tools.
(You asked for offline installers but in case you ever want one later there is a tool which will download and install everything for you.)
Dave Webb
2009-03-19 12:01:31
Interesting. This is the first I've heard of those folks. Any idea how they do their ports? Are they maintaining them themselves, or are they just providing different packaging for Cygwin or MYSYS ports?
T.E.D.
2009-03-19 14:19:14
Ahh. From http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/compile.html it becomes clear that they are just repackaging MSYS. One wonders what they are adding to the process, other than perhaps an easier download interface than Sourceforge.
T.E.D.
2009-03-19 14:26:53
They are not repackaging MSYS. GnuWin32 provides native ports which only rely on standard Windows libraries. The MSYS tools are require the MinGW Unix-emulation layer. The benefit of the GnuWin32 approach is that if you want diff then you can just download the diff package and nothing else.
Dave Webb
2009-03-19 16:04:08
MinGW does not have a Unix emulation layer. It's just a native port of the gcc toolchain. From the MinGW website: "MinGW provides a complete Open Source programming tool set which is suitable for the development of native MS-Windows applications, and which do not depend on any 3rd-party C-Runtime DLLs."
Neil Williams
2009-07-02 20:27:49
+3
A:
Not a direct answer to your question, but you can get the most commonly used utilities from http://www.mingw.org/ without having to jump through the hoops with that horrible Cygwin installer.
Here is a slightly more informative link http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/cobcurses/index.php?title=Install-MSYS.
anon
2009-03-19 12:04:04
A:
I'm not a big fan of Cygwin. It is good if you have some Unix code that requires a full POSIX system, I suppose. Even then, using it renders your programs GPL (due to the GPLed DLL), unless you pay Red Hat for a different license.
Most people should be using MinGW (and MSYS) instead. This gives you the Unix shell and utilities (even compilers, if you want them) without the purposely infectious DLL. Most of the folks using GNU compilers on Windows are using MinGW (although some don't realise it).
Just as importantly for your purposes, you can download the parts separately, rather than use the re-downloading installer.
The SourceForge download page is here. I'd suggest starting with the MSYS Base System package, which will give you the coreutils, Bash, make, tar, etc. If there's other stuff you need, you can pick and choose from the list of packages.
T.E.D.
2009-03-19 14:10:57
"using it renders your programs GPL" Not necessarily: you can use the g++ flag --no-cygwin, then you are linked to the MinGW DLL's. So, you can have the best of both worlds.
Colin
2009-06-12 06:17:13
+9
A:
Here are instructions assuming you want to install Cygwin on a computer with no Internet connection. I assume that you have access to another computer with an Internet connection. Start on the connected computer:
Get the Cygwin install program ("setup.exe"). Direct download URL.
When the setup asks "Choose a download source", choose Download Without Installing
Go through the rest of the setup (choose download directory, mirrors, software packages you want, etc)
Now you have a Cygwin repository right there on your hard disk. Copy this directory, along with the "setup.exe" program, over to your target computer (it does not need to be on a network).
On the target computer, run "setup.exe"
When the setup asks "Choose a download source", choose Install From Local Directory
Complete setup as usual. No Internet access is required.
Colin
2009-03-19 14:27:26
Christ, cheers for this. Bloody obvious when you think about it but I also remember googling frantically for some sort of offline installer before.
Gavin Gilmour
2010-01-10 13:59:20
A:
There is another solution to creating an offline Cygwin installer, which is using 'pmcyg' (http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/pmcyg). If you give pmcyg a list of Cygwin packages you'd like to have available, it will automatically download all of them, their dependencies, and the setup.exe into a folder that you can then burn onto a cdrom.
A:
full offline installer of cygwin date 5may2010
http://rapidshare.com/files/383867897/Cygwin.txt
Regards Abhishek
Abhishek
2010-05-05 16:03:29