how to automatically install all local packages

[Tod Courtney]

We use Cygwin to provide the Windows port of our academic software 
(www.mobius.uiuc.edu).  Our software installation program prompts the user 
for various paths, including the location of our software, and the location 
of the cygwin folder.

Our setup program then calls the cygwin setup program to install a subset of 
cygwin packages we distribute with our software.  We do this for multiple 
reasons: (so our users do not have to know which packages to install, or 
take the time/space to install all of the packages, support offline 
installations from CD, so we can verify our software works with the version 
of cygwin we distribute.)

I can use the command line flags to specify a local install from my 
installation directory (-L), and the location where cygwin shuld be 
installed (-R).  And I can specify that cygwin be installed without all of 
the prompts and interactive options (-q).  But I do not know how to change 
the package chooser from 'default' to 'install', so that all the packages in 
my installation directory are automatically installed.

Please let me know if there is a way to force cygwin to install all packages 
in the local package directory.  Ideally a command line option to change the 
default setting from 'default' to 'install' would be great, but I haven't 
found such an option, if it exists, nor have I had time to trace through the 
code to see how hard it would be to implement such an option.  Any/all 
pointers or suggestions would be appreciated.

thanks
Tod

-- 
Tod Courtney                         Senior Research Programmer
Coordinated Science Lab                      | Ph:(217)244-3203
University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign  | Fx:(217)244-3359
231 CSL, 1308 W. Main St., Urbana, IL 61801  |tod@crhc.uiuc.edu