[feature-request] Installation Tool: Create profiles as meaningful collection of packages

[Johannes Brodwall]

Hi,
I have found that personally, the setup.exe installation is not very
convenient.  With 80+ packages, ranging from critical (ash), to useful
(fileutils) to unusable without external help (postgresql - requires
cygipc), I always end up installing all the packages available for
simplicity.  I currently have a very high-speed internet connection and a
large hard drive, but this is not always the case.

What would be very useful would be to have a set of profiles to select from.
Some examples of profiles could be "minimal installation", "development
platform", and "full".  In addition to answering the question "will cygwin
not work if I don't install this", it will make it more practical to select
a partial installation, something that currently requires a lot of clicking
around.  Is anything like this planned?

The motivation for me asking this question might be somewhat interesting.
My dad, a lawyer, wants to understand better the inner workings of
computers.  I decided that teaching him C would be a good place to start.
However, both his computer and connection are very low-end, so downloading
all of cygwin is not an optimal way of getting gcc.  I really want to
introduce the concept of open-source to him as much as possible as well,
because I believe it is important that people working with law understand
the issues involved better.

I could not find any message addressing this in the archives.

Sincerely,
~Johannes


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