Apr 15 2000 DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com Revised Aug 23 2000 David Starks-Browning starksb@ebi.ac.uk This is the README for the Cygwin download area. * What is Cygwin? See . * How do I install cygwin? Download and run it. Or run it directly from your browser. This will then download the list of available packages, and offer to install them for you. There are a number of options within setup to control installation details. Alternatively, you could download the .tar.gz files from the packages you wish to install into an empty temporary directory, put setup.exe there, and run it. If you specify "Install from Current Directory" when given that option, setup will not do any downloading, it will just install from the .tar.gz files you've got in that directory. (This is convenient if you're working offline, or have trouble getting setup to work with your firewall or proxy server.) Be sure to check for packages in the cygwin/contrib directory too. (This README file is in cygwin/latest.) You don't need to download any -src.tar.gz files in order to install with setup. * Some things to keep in mind... - Shut down all Cygwin applications before running setup! This means bash and inetd, too. - If you download the .tar.gz files manually, check and use a mirror near you. Don't even attempt to ftp directly from sources.redhat.com, it will be too busy. - If you have Network Associates (formerly McAfee) anti-virus software running, consider disabling it during setup. There have been reports that NAI anti-virus products will "hang" when processing Cygwin .tar.gz archives. - Make sure you have enough disk space. A new, full Cygwin installation will use about 75MB of disk space in the "root" directory. Setup will keep copies of the .tar.gz files it uses in the directory where you ran it, in subfolders 'latest' and 'contrib'. This could be as much as about 30MB. (If you are an NT Domain User with a Roaming Profile, you may need to take care that setup doesn't store these on your Desktop.) If you get the -src.tar.gz archives also, that's another 75MB or so. * What configuration options does setup allow? You can: - Download from Internet to Current Directory - Install from Internet - Install from Current Directory When installing, you will have to specify: - install root directory (default is C:\cygwin) - Default Text File Type ("DOS" or "Unix") - Install For ("All" or "Just Me") Choose "DOS" if you want text files to have \r\n line endings (like NOTEPAD.EXE requires), or "Unix" for \n line endings. Choose "All" if you want the Cygwin mount table to be available to anyone who logs into the machine. (Recorded in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. May require Administrative privileges on Windows NT.) Choose "Just Me" otherwise. (Recorded in the registry under HKEY_CURRENT_USER.) Network proxy settings are currently taken from Internet Explorer 5. If you must get through a firewall or proxy server, and do not have IE5 installed and configured properly, you will probably have to download packages manually as described above. Note that setup.exe is a work in progress. Expect features to be missing, or to change in the future. For example, there is currently no uninstall option. * Important note for existing Cygwin users: Setup will unmount certain "standard" mount points if you have them (/ /usr /usr/{bin,lib} /var /lib /bin /etc) and will re-mount (/ /usr/bin /usr/lib) according to your choices in setup. If you have an old Cygwin installation, you should probably backup your current installation before proceeding with setup. * I'd rather do it myself. If you're installing Cygwin for the first time, you should definitely use setup.exe, because it does much more than just untar packages. It also creates a working mount table as well as shortcuts and startup scripts to help you get started. If you know you don't need setup to do this for you, you can simply download tar.gz files and un-tar them directly into '/' (Cygwin root directory). IMPORTANT: You must use a Cygwin-aware tar program for this. Do not use Windows programs like WinZip, because they will not understand Cygwin mounts or symbolic links. * But I don't have a tar program! This isn't really supported, but... Get bootstrap.zip instead. Choose a directory to be your "cygwin root" directory, and unzip it there. It should create a "tmpbin" directory with three files in it. One of them is tar (you need the others also, of course). Just run it right from that directory (or move it to some other random directory, but NOT to your system32 directory) like "tmpbin\tar xvfz .tar.gz". * How do I build from source? You need the -src.tar.gz files. Some packages require other packages (cygwin/*-src.tar.gz is a common requirement, as is common/*-src.tar.gz). If you are really serious about building from source you may want to set up CVS on your system so that you can use the latest development sources. Check out the cygwin web site for more details. In any case, be prepared to do some tweaking. It's unlikely that everything will build on your system without some modification. (Such as dependencies on other packages that are not distributed with Cygwin.) * Where do I get help? Start at . Be sure to check the /usr/doc and /usr/doc/Cygwin directories for any README files. These will contain special instructions for specific packages, if relevant. After you've read the docs and the FAQ, and searched the mailing list archives, then you may send mail to . This is a general, public forum for all Cygwin users.