setup.exe problem: fresh install, missing dlls: cygiconv-2.dll, cygintl-2.dll, cygpopt-0.dll etc

[Frank Stajano <fms27 at cam dot ac dot uk>]

I am setting up a new computer which has no network connection, so I use 
another one to suck the install files onto a usb disk and then use that on 
the new machine.

I have had similar dependency problems on install in the past; so, for good 
measure, I select half a dozen mirrors. I do "download from Internet", 
getting as much stuff as setup.exe sees.

On the new computer I then do "install from local directory", again 
installing everything. However, during post-install, I get many dialog 
boxes saying that "the dynamic link library cygiconv-2.dll could not be 
found in the specified path". I also get plenty more of these alert boxes 
for cygintl-2.dll. How come, since I installed *everything*? And why didn't 
setup notice the missing dependencies before attempting to install?

The problem at this stage is that, having failed the post-install, the path 
is all wrong and the bash command line whose link is on the desktop can't 
even find ls or other basic utilities.

I go to http://www.cygwin.com/packages/ and discover which packages they 
come from: libiconv2-1-9.1.3 and libintl2-0.12.1-3. What now? I could 
install them by hand, but that wouldn't redo the post-install commands that 
failed because of their absence, so instead I go back to the networked 
computer, select some more mirrors, let setup churn for a long time, find 
the two lib* files in the list and so I download them.

Then I go back to the new computer and hopefully install those two libs, 
plus the entire post-install subtree. No joy: bash still has the wrong 
path. So I uninstall cygwin, including registry, redo the install 
completely (churn churn) and.... this time it's two other dlls that are 
missing, cygpopt-0 and cygreadline5.

Of course I could now add even more mirrors (so far I've got 12 already in 
my download directory...) in the hope of finally getting those two missing 
libs. But, since apparently I get no warnings about missing dependencies 
when I chose what to install, I wouldn't be surprised if after that there 
were more missing ones.

So the questions:

1) what I'm doing is clearly too complicated and messy to be the intended 
way of using setup.exe. So please: what is the recommended way of getting 
and installing everything? (not that I really WANT everything, mind you---I 
just want enough bits that post-install completes successfully, but I don't 
know how to get there).

2) assuming I have a half-baked install like the one described above, and 
assuming that I get all the missing libs one by one by hand from 
http://www.cygwin.com/packages/ (as opposed to trying to integrate them in 
the download directory by trying even more mirrors with setup.exe), what is 
then the correct way of installing those AND THEN having the post-install 
stuff complete correctly, so that in the end the path and so on is properly 
configured?

Thanks in advance


  Frank (filologo disneyano) http://www-lce.eng.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/


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