Cygwin - Installing a specific package version using the commandline installer

Question

Using the commandline installer, one can easily install Cygwin with a list of wanted packages like so

setup-x86.exe -q -p='tar,sed,<more packages>'

Is it also possible to fix the version of the packages, something like

setup-x86.exe -q -p='tar:1.2.3,sed,<more packages>'

(this obviously doesn't work)?

Answer 1

The short answer to your query is, No. Cygwin's setup -x86.exe does not give you the flexibility to specify version names along with package names. As per the official doc :

The basic reason for not having a more full-featured package manager is that such a program would need full access to all of Cygwin's POSIX functionality. That is, however, difficult to provide in a Cygwin-free environment, such as exists on first installation. Additionally, Windows does not easily allow overwriting of in-use executables so installing a new version of the Cygwin DLL while a package manager is using the DLL is problematic

There are however a couple of workarounds if you want to download a specific package:

1. Locate a cygwin mirror that hosts the specific version. Google for your version, and if you find a mirror hosting that version, simply use that mirror before running setup -x86.exe. [source]
2. Maintain a local pacakge repository and use the commandline options -q -L -l x:\cygwin-local\, where your downloaded package tree is in x:\cygwin-local\ [source] . You can learn how to build and maitain packages here
3. Compile and install the package after you've set up cygwin using make.