pmcyg

pmcyg is an utility for creating a customized offline installer for Cygwin, the Unix-like environment for Windows. This can be used to create a complete Cygwin installation system on a cdrom, dvd, or USB flash disk.

pmcyg will assemble a collection of Cygwin packages based on a user-supplied list of Cygwin package names, and download only those packages and their dependencies from a Cygwin mirror site, to create a partial mirror of the Cygwin release. This avoids having to download many GB of the official Cygwin release, e.g. using wget. With pmcyg you can easily create a minimalistic installer that can be as small as 20MB.

Usage

To build your off-line Cygwin installer, pmcyg will help you through the following steps:

 * Assembling a list of Cygwin packages you need
 * Selecting a mirror site from which to download Cygwin packages
 * Prompting pmcyg to download packages and their dependencies

Thereafter, you can use a standard CD or DVD-burning application to create an off-line installer, optionally with autorun capability. You can even use pmcyg to download directly onto a USB key.

You can simply mirror the entire set of Cygwin packages, which will occupy about 1.2GB, or you can list particular packages that you want to have available. This package list can be based on a template which pmcyg will generate, or might be as simple as:

# Base packages
bash
cygwin-doc

# Development packages
cppunit
gcc
gcc-g++
mercurial
ocaml

# Editors
ed
emacs-X11
nedit
vim

# X11 Window system
xcalc
xorg-server
xterm

For the most complete Cygwin distribution, pmcyg can also optionally include Cygwin source packages (taking about 10.7GB if you mirror the entire Cygwin tree).

When used with its graphical user interface, pmcyg will automatically try to find the latest official list of Cygwin mirrors sites, and present a sorted selection based on geographical region.

pmcyg will check that the versions of packages in your local directory, and update those packages with newer versions if available from your selected download site. This allows you to maintain a current version of all your favourite Cygwin packages and the 'setup.exe' installer, which you could keep on a USB memory stick, ready for use as an offline installer on any PC without direct internet access.

What is new in this release:

• Support for switchable x86/x86_64 Cygwin architectures was added.
• Package lists can now include architectural switches (e.g. to packages not supported on x86_64).
• The GUI was neatened to include 'folder' icons in place of 'browse' buttons.

What is new in version 1.0:

• Support for multi-byte (UTF-8) characters within package listings was improved.

What is new in version 0.9:

• Commonly used functions have been converted to image buttons on the GUI.
• The default URL of the Cygwin installer has been updated.

What is new in version 0.7:

• Facilities for re-attempting failed downloads were added.
• Experimental support was added for automatic creation of ISO images.
• Error reporting of empty packages was improved.

Requirements:

• Python