Cygwin save package selections for later reinstall - windows

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to save the current package selections for cygwin for a later reinstall or porting on a different system.
It would be really great to:
run a command to export a list of installed packages on an existing system
pass the list to the installer on another system in a way such as setup-x86_64.exe --list list.txt
I don't think the setup has such a switch, so even any type of script or batch working in this direction would be just fine.
Since the number of needed packages is very high, it should be unattended in order to consider it as a good solution!
What would be the best way to accomplish a quick reinstall like this?

Answer 1

The list of installed packages is available with cygcheck. Setup does not accept a list option but you can specific the list with -P
The following code, when used with -A option will create
a crafted cyg-reinstall-${Arch}.bat batch file to install all
packages existing in a system.
#!/bin/bash
# Create a batch file to reinstall using setup-{ARCH}.exe
# all packages reported as incomplete
print_error=1
if [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
if [ $1 == "-I" ]
then
lista=$(mktemp)
cygcheck -c | grep "Incomplete" > $lista
print_error=0
fi
if [ $1 == "-A" ]
then
lista=$(mktemp)
cygcheck -cd | sed -e "1,2d" > $lista
print_error=0
fi
fi
if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
if [ $1 == "-f" ]
then
lista=$2
print_error=0
fi
fi
# error message if options are incorrect.
if [ $print_error -eq 1 ]
then
echo -n "Usage : " $(basename $0)
echo " [ -A | -I | -f filelist ]"
echo " create cyg-reinstall-{ARC}.bat from"
echo " options"
echo " -A : All packages as reported by cygcheck"
echo " -I : incomplete packages as reported by cygcheck"
echo " -f : packages in filelist (one per raw)"
exit 1
fi
if [ $(arch) == "x86_64" ]
then
A="x86_64"
else
A="x86"
fi
# writing header
echo -n -e "setup-${A}.exe " > cyg-reinstall-${A}.bat
# option -x remove and -P install
# for re-install packages we need both
if [ $1 == "-I" ]
then
awk 'BEGIN{printf(" -x ")} NR==1{printf $1}{printf ",%s", $1}' ${lista} >> cyg-reinstall-${A}.bat
fi
awk 'BEGIN{printf(" -P ")} NR==1{printf $1}{printf ",%s", $1} END { printf "\r\n pause "}' ${lista} >> cyg-reinstall-${A}.bat
# execution permission for the script
chmod +x cyg-reinstall-${A}.bat

Answer 2

I recognize that this question is several years old, but I've often found useful information on here from even longer ago, so this might still help someone someday.
The script above did not work for me; I suspect the list was too long, or something of that nature. So I kept trying things, and I eventually arrived at a shell one-liner that worked correctly by trimming the list to only those items that I had explicitly requested. The key came from #Andrey's comment above: /etc/setup/installed.db!
Here's the command I used:
(ORIG_PKGS="/path/to/other-cygwin64/etc/setup/installed.db" ; PKGS=$(awk '/ 1$/ {print $1}' "${ORIG_PKGS}") ; PLIST=$(tr '\n' ',' <<< "${PKGS}") ; /setup-x86_64 -q -P "${PLIST%%,}")
For readability, here it is split up into multiple lines:
ORIG_PKGS="/path/to/other-cygwin64/etc/setup/installed.db"
PKGS=$(awk '/ 1$/ {print $1}' "${ORIG_PKGS}")
PLIST=$(tr '\n' ',' <<< "${PKGS}")
/setup-x86_64 -q -P "${PLIST%%,}"
All you should need is the /etc/setup/installed.db from the previous Cygwin installation; just alter the value of ORIG_PKGS with the correct path to that file, and the rest should Just Work®!