Installing additional packages for Cygwin

Question

To install additional packages for Cygwin, do I just need to run the setup.exe again and choose from the packages list?

Also, doing this won't harm my computer in terms of 2 Cygwin instances being installed or problems of that kind (I'm kind of a noobie with these things).

Last, there is no package manager in Cygwin which you can run in the command line? Something similar to Pip in Python.

first two yes, last one not sure(I think you could add one if you'd like). I also don't think this is on-topic. — CBIII, Jul 24 '13 at 04:06
@Clyde, I'd go the "software tools commonly used by programmers" route in terms of being on-topic. While you can certainly use the non-programming parts of CygWin (like X), I would say the vast majority of use (well, my use anyway) is of the programming type tools (awk, sed, grep, bash scripts, etc). — paxdiablo, Jul 24 '13 at 04:09
yep, you're right; I meant to say "not sure", but what's done is done. — CBIII, Jul 24 '13 at 04:20
You are supposed to use the `setup.exe` method (now in two flavours for 32 and 64 bit installs) - specifically because Windows make it impossible to update `.dlls` that are in use. It includes code to detect this and warn if that is attempted (as a reboot may become necessary to get around it) - and this also makes changing packages (particularly updating or removing them) unsafe/impossible from within a running Cygwin sub-system...! — SlySven, Apr 07 '17 at 18:52

score 35 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 28 '16 at 04:59

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No, adding additional packages doesn’t modify the current settings. There is a package manager called apt-cyg which installes additional packages from command-line. To install apt-cyg follow the below steps:

wget rawgit.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg
install apt-cyg /bin

Note: wget should be installed for downloading the apt-cyg. To Use apt-cyg for installing additional package (after following the above steps):

apt-cyg install ncurses

edited Jan 28 '16 at 04:59

answered Mar 04 '15 at 14:42

balajivijayan

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Looked promising, but having "MD5 sum did not match, exiting" when trying to install unzip – Mizmor Aug 20 '15 at 13:43
googlecode.com repository is deprecated. Please update – gavioto Oct 01 '15 at 18:56
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It was on github, then had some copyright issues. It appears to be back now at https://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg – U007D May 19 '16 at 16:36
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so much better than the re-running setup. – chriskelly Feb 10 '18 at 17:46
looks like you'll actually need this command (with --no-check-certificate): `wget --no-check-certificate rawgit.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg` – clemep Sep 26 '22 at 14:48

score 28 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 26 '17 at 15:38

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No, it doesn't hurt the current setup. The install program knows what's installed already.

Having said that, I long ago got into the habit of installing all of Cygwin since, despite its size, it's still minuscule compared to the size of modern hard disks. That way, you won't ever have to worry about whether a package is installed or not.

edited Jan 26 '17 at 15:38

Lii

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answered Jul 24 '13 at 04:07

paxdiablo

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thanks. did just that (install all of them) and good thing too since 3 of the packages i needed but cant find were obsolete (didnt ticked the show obsolete packages box) but were considered dependencies for some of the packages so they got installed in the end. – osse Jul 24 '13 at 04:23
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Just a note to this, I followed your advice and installed everything. It works good but took 24 hours on my 70Megabit connection and resulted in a 22GB folder with 500k files. Just a word of warning to people who think it's a quick install! – georgiecasey Apr 17 '14 at 19:19
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@georgie: yes, it's not a fast process. I tend to separate the download from install, downloading once a year to a flash drive and then using that to install everywhere I need it. – paxdiablo Dec 30 '14 at 06:44

david m lee · Answer 3 · 2017-08-05T20:23:26.320

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Re-run the setup executable like "cygwin_setup-x86_64.exe" should do it.

"Install from Internet"
Accept your existing root directory (from your existing installation)
Use your existing "Local Package Directory"
On the screen, view "Full"
Search for the new package you want to add
Go through the installation

edited Aug 05 '17 at 20:23

answered Aug 05 '17 at 19:01

david m lee

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score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 22 '18 at 16:04

Additional option, may be helpful for someone:

To install additional packages in windows from windows command line you can use your cygwin installer.
I suppose, you've already downloaded it to install cygwin from here https://cygwin.com/install.html.

$ setup-x86_64.exe -q -P graphviz

see this guide for details: http://preshing.com/20141108/how-to-install-the-latest-gcc-on-windows/

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 11 '19 at 11:08

There is no package management in Cygwin outside of the setup program. The setup only applies updates to your current installation, it does not overwrite packages than what you already have.

So if you want new packages just rerun the setup program to install packages.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 10 '20 at 04:25

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You can just look for the package binaries and decompress them in the C:\cygwin\bin folder. I did that for dos2unix ( https://cygwin.com/packages/summary/dos2unix.html ) and trying it out now.

answered May 10 '20 at 04:25

Paulina D.

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Installing additional packages for Cygwin

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