time to download

[Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)]

At 04:06 AM 2/10/2001, Warren Young wrote:
>"Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc)" wrote:
> > 
> > If you do download some minimal set though and you have any trouble using
> > Cygwin, the first thing you should do is download and install the rest of
> > the packages ...
>
>I suppose that's fine for the lucky folk behind a big pipe, but Cygwin
>these days has added several packages that no user will need to make
>their system work: they should only be downloaded on an as-needed
>basis.  Examples: openssh, squid, mutt, perl, zip/unzip, ncftp...  These
>are all useful packages, of course, but they're "leaf nodes" on the
>Cygwin dependency tree.


With the exception of openssh, all of the packages you list here are from
the "contrib" directory, which I noted were optional.


>On this note, it might be useful to have two vetted configurations,
>"minimal user" and "minimal developer", which each do what you'd
>expect.  The third would be "custom", which would take you to the
>current package selection screen.  I think we could get "minimal user"
>down to 5 MB or so.  Certainly less than 10.


It certainly would be beneficial to have some way of determining
dependencies so that a smaller set could be downloaded by those who want
just that.  Figuring out the dependencies among all the packages is 
tractable but not simple.  Unless someone volunteers to do this, I don't
see this happening soon.  In the meantime, whether its practical, realistic,
or desirable, downloading all packages in "latest" is the recommended way 
to get a working Cygwin environment.  As always, people are free to do as
they want but support from this list pretty much requires a known base 
installation.  Those that don't have it and report problems are always 
directed to first install everything...





Larry Hall                              lhall@rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      http://www.rfk.com
118 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
Holliston, MA 01746                     (508) 893-9889 - FAX



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