How to install new packages on Cygwin?

Question

I installed the latest version of Cygwin with a number of packages. I soon realised that I need more packages (such as wget, etc) and I couldn't find a way to install the new packages without running the set up again and reinstall everything from scratch.

What I'm looking for is the equivalent of apt-get on Cygwin (if such a thing exists).

Answer 1

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 that what you already have (unless you have explicitly said so).

Answer 2

There is a package called apt-cyg that may be what you are looking for. It appears to be based upon apt-get.

apt-cyg is a command-line installer for Cygwin which cooperates with Cygwin Setup and uses the same repository. The syntax is similar to apt-get.

An example command would be

$ apt-cyg install yourPackage

To install it you need wget, tar, gawk, and bzip2. You can download all these packages from the Cygwin packages list.

Answer 3

This belongs on Superuser, but...

Re-run the setup program again. This is how you update Cygwin as well.

Answer 4

I had similar problem, so yes, check out superuser: http://superuser.com/questions/40545/upgrading-and-installing-packages-through-the-cygwin-command-line/301026#301026