How to install Cygwin packages from commandline using apt-cyg

Probably the biggest pain in using Cygwin is that you need to use the setup GUI program and go through its wizard dialog to view, install or uninstall packages. Thankfully, there is now a solution called apt-cyg that mimics apt-get on Linux to list, install and remove Cygwin packages.

Installation

To install apt-cyg, first install the subversion and wget packages using the setup program. After that do:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg
$ install apt-cyg /bin

You are now ready to use apt-cyg, which is actually a Bash shell script.

Usage

This is really easy:

$ apt-cyg update
(Update package information from the internet)

$ apt-cyg show
(Lists installed packages)

$ apt-cyg find foo
(Lists installed and not-installed packages with foo in their name)

$ apt-cyg describe foo
(List description of package named foo)

$ apt-cyg install foo
(Install package named foo)

$ apt-cyg remove foo
(Remove package named foo)

Tried with: Cygwin 2.10.0