Request for feature: more flexible setup routine

[Marshall Abrams]

I *love* Cygwin.  I use it to get my work done every day.   I am grateful to 
everyone who has contributed to it over the years and continues to do so. 
Thank you.  That bears repeating: Thank you!

I have one suggestion: I wish that the setup routine was better for... users 
like me who mainly want to get work done, don't care necessarily care 
whether we have the latest versions of every package (honestly, most of 
package changes are irrelevant to most people most of the time (OK, until 
you need it...)), and more than anything else, don't want to break anything 
that works.

One of the beautiful things about Cygwin's setup.exe is that when--perhaps 
in the middle of trying to get something done before a deadline--I realize 
that a Cygwin package I didn't think I'd need would help.  If it hasn't been 
*too* long since I last installed, I go and mark the package to install, 
carefully make sure that I mark all other new packages as "keep", and hit 
next.  Great.  The 1.7 upgrade has made that a pita.  I am *not* going to 
install 1.7.  Not now.   I'm in the middle of a project.  I just wanted one 
little tool.

What I hope will be added is some way to allow setup.exe to look farther 
back in the past, or automatically ignore most package releases. 
Something--something so that I can get the functionality of setup.exe for 
one or two packages when I haven't updated anything for while--because it 
was working fine!  And I don't fix what's not broken.

(I never install everything--I'd be willing to waste the disk space, but too 
often incompatibilities break things.  That's also why I don't upgrade what 
doesn't need upgrading.  One time in five something is installed that screws 
up something I had working.  That's not a complaint; it's inevitable with a 
complex system.   I also don't regularly upgrade everything, because when I 
do I sometimes have to fix something major, or just fix some packages that 
has been "improved" in such a way that I can no longer work the way I want 
without undoing something and recustomizing it.  Again: Inevitable with a 
complex system.)

Last but not least--I can't say it enough:
Thank you!


Marshall Abrams
marshall@logical.net 


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