A Minimal Guide to Installing Cygwin

Here is a quick checklist for installing enough of Cygwin for basic C programming. Feel free to explore more widely, but this is enough to get started.

1. Download setup.exe from www.cygwin.com.
2. Run setup. Select “install from the internet” and use the defaults for the all users and binary lineend options. It’s best to install the files in the suggested directories, or in other directories that do not contain spaces in any of the folder names (e.g., c:\apps\cygwin is fine; c:\Program Files or c:\Documents and Settings\user\cygwin can cause problems). Most of the mirror sites in the list should be fine; if you don't have any favorites, kernel.org or osuosl.org, which are both well-known open source sites on the west coast, seem to work reliably.
3. You’ll eventually need to select some packages that are not part of the core, default installation, but in the past I’ve run into some glitches by trying to download and install too much on the first try. It may be just as well to only install the default selection of files the first time, then rerun the setup program to add needed things that are not part of the core set. So the first time you run setup, click on next and let the installer do its thing.
4. If you’ve only done a basic install, rerun setup to install the C compiler and related things. Run setup like before, but this time, select under the devel(opemnt) category gcc, gdb, make, and anything else you need or want. Or just select everything under devel. If you select only some of the files, the installer will automatically add other files that the selected packages need. Let it add what it wants.
5. That’s it. Run cygwin to start up a bash (shell) window and have fun. Try creating and running a "hello world" C program to be sure you've got the basic pieces.
   

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