Capturing a Cygwin instance from another PC

[Corinna Vinschen]

On Nov 22 23:44, Cedric Blancher via Cygwin wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Nov 2023 at 17:15, Eliot Moss via Cygwin <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 11/22/2023 10:43 AM, Bill Stewart via Cygwin wrote:
> > > On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 7:53 AM Jose Isaias Cabrera wrote:
> > >
> > > I have a new Win11 PC, and I wanted to capture the same Cygwin setup that I
> > >> have in another Win10 PC. I copied the C:\cygwin64 folder from the Win10 pc
> > >> to the Win11 pc, then I downloaded a fresh setup-x86_64.exe from
> > >> cygwin.com to the win11 PC. I ran it and chose "Install from Local
> > >> Directory" and only one shortcut for "Cygwin64 Terminal" was created on the
> > >> desktop. No Cygwin nor Cygwin-X folders were created on the Start menu. The
> > >> original cygwin from the Win10 PC had X installed also.
> > >>
> > >
> > > I don't think "Install from Local Directory" means "reproduce same cygwin
> > > installation on a separate computer".
> >
> > In fact, it means to install using the package files in some local directory,
> > i.e., "assume the packages are already downloaded".
> >
> > It would be reasonable to copy over downloaded packages.
> >
> > I believe there are commands / techniques that would then make it fairly
> > easy to install that specific set of packages "from scratch" (but from
> > the local copy of the packages).  Copying *installed* file hierarchies
> > is trickier because of permission / ownership concerns.
> 
> Does Cygwin have a way to dump the list of installed packages, and
> feed that list back to Cygwin setup.exe?

You just call `cygcheck -cd' and create a tiny script massaging the output
into a comma-separated list.

This you can feed into a setup-x86-64.exe -P call.


Corinna