MinGW - Minimalist GNU for Windows

MinGW Package Download and Installation Tool ============================================ $Id: readme.txt,v 1.12 2012/04/25 23:28:14 keithmarshall Exp $ Description ----------- mingw-get is a tool to assist users in the management of MinGW and MSYS software installations. Configured via an online XML database, which is managed by the project maintainers, it offers a command line driven user interface facilitating selective download and installation of packages provided by the project. The XML database provides maintainers with a mechanism for the specification of inter-package dependencies; this permits configuration of any package, such that the end user may elect to install just that specific package, leaving mingw-get to ensure that all dependencies will be automatically satisfied at installation time. A graphical user interface is planned as a future enhancement. Licensing Terms --------------- mingw-get is free software. Permission is granted to copy, modify and redistribute this software, under the provisions of the GNU General Public License, Version 3, (or, at your option, any later version), as published by the Free Software Foundation; see the file COPYING, which is distributed with the mingw-get-lic package, and with the source code, for licensing details. Note, in particular, that mingw-get is provided "as is", in the hope that it may prove useful, but WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND; not even an implied WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, nor of FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Under no circumstances will the author, or the MinGW Project, accept liability for any damages, however caused, arising from the use of this software. Release Notes ============= The information presented below describes the user visible changes introduced with each release of mingw-get. The online version of this historical record is restricted to recent releases; the full history is recorded in the NEWS file, which is included in the source code package. mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120426-1 ------------------------------------- Release date: 2012-04-26 This is an emergency bug-fix release; it provides an immediate interim work-around for bug #3520864, circumventing a critical regression which was introduced in mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120416-1, and is thus a mandatory upgrade for users who had previously upgraded to that version. It also incorporates the correction for bug #3520488. mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120416-1 ------------------------------------- Release date: 2012-04-16 This milestone release marks the point at which the code base, for the CLI implementation, is deemed to have progressed from alpha to beta (or better) quality. It corrects several packaging deficiencies within the source code distribution, in addition to fixing two reported bugs; it also adds several new features. The following bugs are fixed by this release:-- - #3416013: --reinstall and dependent packages Specifically, in the case of application of the --reinstall option to meta-packages, previous releases would have no effect. This is now corrected, such that the --reinstall action is applied recursively to each declared requirement of any meta-package, to the depth of the first non-meta package in each requirement chain. - #3424406: install --reinstall performs an upgrade When performing the "install" action, with the --reinstall option, previous releases would consider the availability of upgrades for the package in question, promoting the "install" action to "upgrade" when possible. This anomaly has now been corrected; when specified with the "install" action, the --reinstall option will cause reinstallation of the originally installed version, ignoring available upgrades; (the former behaviour remains available, by specifying the --reinstall option together with the "upgrade" action). The following new features have been implemented:-- - Forced installation of a specified (non-current) release. The package name specified as the predicate of any "install" or "upgrade" action may now be qualified by a version specification, allowing the user to select any known version, (not necessarily the most recently released), for installation. In the case of any package which has not been previously installed, the format is any of: mingw-get install "package-name=version-spec" mingw-get install "package-name<version-spec" mingw-get install "package-name<=version-spec" mingw-get install "package-name>=version-spec" mingw-get install "package-name>version-spec" while for any package which has been previously installed, and is to be "rolled back" to an earlier release, the same forms are supported, using the "upgrade" action in place of "install". In each of the above command forms, "package-name" represents the unqualified package name, as it would be specified in any regular invocation of mingw-get, and "version-spec" is the selector for the desired version; (in the case of an "=" qualifier, this must be an exact match for the desired version, unless it ends with the "*" wild card). For example, if GCC has already been installed at version 4.6.2-1, (the most recent release at this time of writing), it may be rolled back to the last version 4.5 release by: mingw-get upgrade "gcc=4.5.*" or by using an inequality specifier, to exclude gcc-4.6 and later: mingw-get upgrade "gcc<4.6" Note that, particularly in the case of the inequality qualifiers, the argument must be quoted, to avoid interpretation of the inequality operator as the shell's redirection operator. Also note that any explicit *inclusive* version range, such as: mingw-get upgrade "gcc>4.5<4.6" is permitted; however no white space is permitted, anywhere within the qualified package specification. - Support for package maintainer scripted installation hooks. An embedded script interpreter, based on Lua version 5.2, has been incorporated; this provides support for "pre-install", "post-install", "pre-remove", and "post-remove" action hooks, which may be specified by package maintainers, in the form of Lua scripts embedded within "action" elements in any package's XML catalogue entry. This capability is further supported by the provision of Lua modules, providing a standardised mechanism for creation of MS-Windows shell links, (a.k.a. shortcuts). - New option: "--desktop" Grants permission, to package maintainer specified scripts, to create shortcuts on the user's desktop; alternatively, it may be specified as --desktop=all-users, to make such shortcuts available to all users. - New option: "--start-menu" Grants permission, to package maintainer specified scripts, to create shortcuts in the user's start menu; alternatively, it may be specified as --start-menu=all-users, to make such shortcuts available in the start menus of all users. mingw-get-0.4-mingw32-alpha-1 ----------------------------- Release date: 2011-11-06 This release fixes a critical bug in the upgrade code, whereby an existing DLL could be replaced by an alternative with an incompatible ABI version, where the correct action is to install both concurrently. As a critical bug-fix release, this is a strongly recommended upgrade for all users. In addition to this critical bug-fix, the following new features have been implemented:-- - Modified action: "upgrade" The "upgrade" request now supports anonymous upgrade of all currently installed packages; in other words, the command: $ mingw-get upgrade issued without any additional package-name arguments, will cause mingw-get to invoke the upgrade action in respect of each and every package which is currently recorded as "installed", and for which an upgrade is available. - New action: "source" Invoked by a command of the form: $ mingw-get source package-name ... requests mingw-get to download the source code archive for each named package, and unpack it in the current working directory. - New action: "licence" Similar to "source", and invoked by a command of the form: $ mingw-get licence package-name ... requests mingw-get to download the licence packs for each named package, once again unpacking them in the current working directory. - New option: "--print-uris" Used in conjunction with an "install", "source", or "licence" request, causes mingw-get to print, on stdout, the URIs from whence the packages needed to satisfy the request may be downloaded, without otherwise completing the request; (nothing is actually downloaded, unpacked, or installed). This option causes the URIs to be printed irrespective of the installation status of the named packages. - New option: "--download-only" Used with an "install", "upgrade", or "licence" request, causes mingw- get to download any package archives which are necessary to complete the specified action, provided they are not already present within the package cache, but without unpacking or installing the package content. After completing the request, the requisite package archives may be found in the mingw-get package cache var/cache/mingw-get/packages relative to mingw-get's own sysroot path. Similarly, when used with the "source" request, the "--download-only" option causes mingw-get to download any source package archives needed to complete the request, (once again, provided they are not already present in the download cache), but without unpacking them. In this case, after completing the request, the requisite source archives may be found in the directory var/cache/mingw-get/source relative to the sysroot path. - New option: "--all-related" Used with the "source" or "licence" requests, this option extends the scope of the request, causing mingw-get to also process the source or licence packages associated with all runtime dependencies identified for the packages named in the command. Installation Instructions ========================= The information which follows describes the procedure for installing and configuring mingw-get, and for keeping the installation current. The online version of this document is an abridged form, focussing on the installation of binary releases; users who prefer to build and install from source are advised to consult the unabridged form of this document, which may be found in the file "INSTALL", within the source code distribution tarball. Please report bugs as directed at http://mingw.org/Reporting_Bugs First Time Installation of a Binary Release ------------------------------------------- To install mingw-get, visit the MinGW files repository at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files and, from the "Automated MinGW Installer/mingw-get" folder, download your choice of either: mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120426-1-bin.zip or (preferred, if you know how to unpack it): mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120426-1-bin.tar.gz Whichever of these you choose to download, you should unpack it into the directory in which you intend to host your MinGW installation; (we *strongly* recommend that you adopt our standard of C:\MinGW [*], unless you have an exceptional reason to make an alternative choice), then use your preferred method for assignment of environment variables to add the appropriate directory (default C:\MinGW\bin) to your PATH; (this should be added as a permanent PATH assignment). Having completed this phase of installation, you may then wish to review the following section on configuration; if nothing else, you may wish to copy the supplied defaults.xml file to profile.xml, even if you choose not to introduce any customisations. Finally, to initialise the installation recording database, you should run the command [**]: C:\> mingw-get install mingw-get [*] If you insist on adopting a different directory from the recommended default, you are *strongly* advised to avoid any directory which has white space in its absolute path name; in particular, those who choose to ignore this advice, and install MinGW into some subdirectory of (for example) C:\Program Files", usually discover to their cost that certain tools may not work correctly. This document will refer to files as though installed in the recommended default location, with a path prefix of C:\MinGW. If, having read the above warning, you do decide to adopt an alternative installation path, then please substitute your alternative prefix, as appropriate, where this document refers to C:\MinGW. [**] If you have chosen mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120426-1-bin.tar.gz as your installation source, rather than mingw- get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120426-1-bin.zip, you may like to create the directory: C:\MinGW\var\cache\mingw-get\packages (together with any requisite parents, and adjusting the C:\MinGW prefix to suit your installation choice, if necessary). You may then move the mingw-get-0.5-mingw32-beta-20120426-1-bin.tar.gz file to it, *before* you run the above command; this will relieve mingw-get of the overhead which would be incurred by downloading the file a second time. Specifying the Configuration ---------------------------- When you invoke mingw-get, it will attempt to read configuration data from the file: C:\MinGW\var\lib\mingw-get\data\profile.xml (with any necessary adjustment of the C:\MinGW installation prefix, as noted previously); if, and only if, this file cannot be read, then a fallback attempt will be made, to read the configuration from: C:\MinGW\var\lib\mingw-get\data\defaults.xml instead. Of this pair of files, profile.xml is *not* included within the mingw-get distribution, but defaults.xml *is*. It is a liberally commented XML file, which you are advised to copy to create profile.xml; you may then modify this, as you see fit, to suit your own installation requirements. [*] At the present time, the only entries you should consider changing are the path names specified by the "path" attribute associated with each of the "sysroot" elements within the first (only) "system-map" element; (these specify the prefix directory path names for your installation). You probably want to make the path for the "mingw32" subsystem match your choice for your mingw-get installation; (the "%R" notation, used in defaults.xml, sets it up thus, regardless of whether you choose to install in C:\MinGW, or an alternative location). [*] The recommendation to copy defaults.xml to profile.xml may seem to be an unnecessary inconvenience; it is implemented this way in order to safeguard any configuration changes you wish to make; during an upgrade, defaults.xml will be overwritten, but profile.xml will not, so your configuration will be preserved. Upgrading an Existing Installation to a Newer Binary Release ------------------------------------------------------------ Once you have completed a first-time installation of mingw-get, whether from a binary release or by building and installing from source, you may wish to upgrade it, as the project team publishes new releases. Unless you insist on *always* installing from source, (in which case each upgrade effectively becomes a fresh first-time installation from the new source code), and provided: - you have previously installed mingw-get-0.1-mingw32-alpha-3 or newer, and - you have completed the first-time installation process, by running C:\> mingw-get install mingw-get then you may upgrade to a newer binary release by running C:\> mingw-get update C:\> mingw-get upgrade mingw-get Otherwise, if you have a previously unfinalised installation, i.e. you did not previously run C:\> mingw-get install mingw-get and that previous installation is of mingw-get-0.1-mingw32-alpha-3 or newer, then you may upgrade and finalise by running C:\> mingw-get update C:\> mingw-get install mingw-get Alternatively, any previous installation of mingw-get may be upgraded by simply performing a new first-time installation, overwriting the previously installed version; (this is the only option available, if the original installation predates mingw-get-0.1-mingw32-alpha-3). $Document: readme.txt $: end of file