How do I install cygwin components from the comman

Question

Is there a tool in the Cygwin package similar to apt-get on Debian or yum on redhat that allows me to install components from the command line?

Answer 1

Usually before installing a package one has to know its exact name:

# define a string to search
export to_srch=perl

# get html output of search and pick only the cygwin package names
wget -qO- "https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=$to_srch&arch=x86_64" | \
perl -l -ne 'm!(.*?)<\/a>\s+\-(.*?)\:(.*?)<\/li>!;print $2'

# and install 
# install multiple packages at once, note the
setup-x86_64.exe -q -s http://cygwin.mirror.constant.com -P "<<chosen_package_name>>"

Answer 2

Cygwin's setup accepts command-line arguments to install packages from the command-line.

e.g. setup-x86.exe -q -P packagename1,packagename2 to install packages without any GUI interaction ('unattended setup mode').

(Note that you need to use setup-x86.exe or setup-x86_64.exe as appropriate.)

See http://cygwin.com/packages/ for the package list.

Answer 3

There is no tool specifically in the 'setup.exe' installer that offers the functionality of apt-get. There is, however, a command-line package installer for Cygwin that can be downloaded separately, but it is not entirely stable and relies on workarounds.

apt-cyg: http://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg

Check out the issues tab for the project to see the known problems.

Answer 4

Dawid Ferenczy's answer is pretty complete but after I tried almost all of his options I've found that the Chocolatey’s cyg-get was the best (at least the only one that I could get to work).

I was wanting to install wget, the steps was this:

choco install cyg-get

Then:

cyg-get wget

Answer 5

First, download installer at: https://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe, then:

# move installer to cygwin folder
mv C:/Users/<you>/Downloads/setup-x86_64.exe C:/cygwin64/

# add alias to bash_aliases
echo "alias install='C:/cygwin64/setup-x86_64.exe -q -P'" >> ~/.bash_aliases

# add bash_aliases to bashrc if missing
echo "source ~/.bash_aliases" >> ~/.bashrc  

e.g.

install vim

Answer 6

For a more convenient installer, you may want to use apt-cyg as your package manager. Its syntax similar to apt-get, which is a plus. For this, follow the above steps and then use Cygwin Bash for the following steps

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg
chmod +x apt-cyg
mv apt-cyg /usr/local/bin

Now that apt-cyg is installed. Here are few examples of installing some packages

apt-cyg install nano
apt-cyg install git
apt-cyg install ca-certificates