#2353 Alternative non-SourceForge Installer

[Armin Hadzic]

Hello MinGW Team,

I have been trying to install mingw-get-setup.exe on a windows computer on a corporate network. Unfortunately downloads from SourceForge are blocked by the company firewall. My IT department has informed me that they cannot whitelist SourceForge. Is there an alternative installer that does not try to install packages from SourceForge? Even if I was able to install mingw-get-setup properly, I would still need to use mingw-get to install additional packages. If said packages are hosted on SourceForge, I won't be able to configure MinGW for my desired setup.

Best Regards,
Armin

[Elio Blanca]

Actually, the packages may be downloaded on another PC and then copied into var\cache\mingw-get\packages so the mingw-get executable may find them but the very first step, the catalog update, has to be done on line AFAIK.

[Keith Marshall]

Actually, if the OP can perform the installation on another PC, which is not behind the offending firewall, then the entire installation tree may be cloned to removable media, (USB storage, say), and then run from there, on any PC, (behind the firewall, or otherwise). Indeed, the installation could be targetted to removable media, from the outset, without requiring a permanent copy on the installing PC's hard drive; once a removable installation has been achieved, that may be cloned to fixed storage on as many other PCs as desired, (bypassing any firewall, via "sneakernet").

[Keith Marshall]

Right now, there is no completely viable alternative. We are exploring the practicalities of migrating our package hosting to OSDN.net, but at present only mingw-get-setup.exe has been migrated, (and that still in experimental phase, so, although working, may be subject to change). You may wish to try that, but please be aware that it will still refer to SourceForge for additional packages.