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Re: Update problems


On 2010/01/08 2:38 PM, Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
> On 01/08/2010 03:41 PM, Christian Franke wrote:
>> Larry Hall (Cygwin) wrote:
>>> On 01/07/2010 09:39 PM, David Gast wrote:
>>>> There are two problems with updating cygwin.
>>>>
>>>> 1. If you run setup.exe from bash, bash cannot be updated
>>>> because the file is in use.
>>>
>>> Sure. This is the reason 'setup.exe' exists. It's a Windows
>>> "feature" that keeps you from replacing a file that's in use.
>>> 'setup.exe' was created to provide a native Windows program
>>> to avoid the problem of something like 'setup.exe' needing to
>>> update files that are in use by it. If it were possible to
>>> replace files in use with the same ease as on Linux, say,
>>> then 'setup.exe' would never be needed since things like
>>> rpm, yum, and apt, to name a few, could be used directly
>>> to install and update Cygwin.
>>
>> Cygwin 1.7 actually allows to replace an executable which is still in
>> use:
>> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2009-12/msg00423.html
> 
> But this is of no help here.  The fact that Cygwin has this feature
> internally
> won't make 'setup.exe' use it.  If someone wants to offer a patch for
> 'setup.exe'
> to make it be able to be run from a Cygwin shell, I'm sure it will be
> thoughtfully
> considered.

Not to beat a dead hippo here, but if Cygwin allows in-use files to be
replaced, then what is 'setup.exe' needed for? (Aside from the initial
bootstrap of Cygwin, of course.) Shouldn't it be possible to have proper
package management---like dpkg, apt, rpm, yum, etc---from within Cygwin now?

Just wondering.

-SM
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