Cygwin package manager

[Chris Cormie]

> There's no maturity requirement as such.  For a package such as cyg-apt that
> doesn't exist in other distros, you have to get 5 positive votes from current
> package maintainers.  A clear explanation of what cyg-apt does that setup
> doesn't, would probably go a long way towards that.

Thanks for that, I'll work on the manpage and the case for cyg-apt vs 
setup. I think they are natural partners actually: setup shows you 
what's available, and works outside Cygwin, with Cygwin shut down. 
cyg-apt is strongest when you know what you want and provides package 
management without closing your Cygwin window.

> If you think the software needs more testing before it should go into general
> release, then you can release it as a "Test" release, as described at the above
> URL.  The disadvantage is that it won't be visible in setup unless people click
> on the "Test" radio button at the top.  You can still ask people on this list to
> test it. 

Hmmm.

>> If you do wish to experiment with using cyg-apt's wider functionality in 
>> an automated context my first thoughts are:
>>
>> * run cyg-apt from Windows, rather than inside Cygwin to reduce the 
>> number of packages cyg-apt can't manipulate to the bare minimum (cygwin, 
>> coreutils). See the wiki for more info.
> 
> Anyone who tries to uninstall Base packages from within Cygwin, gets what they
> deserve.
> 
> I suppose though, that you'd run into trouble trying to upgrade Python, or
> certainly Cygwin, from cyg-apt running in Cygwin.

What you get is a polite warning that:
[python cygwin base-cygwin coreutils bash zlib libreadline] can't be 
changed from within Cygwin and cyg-apt exits.

Cheers,
Chris

--
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple