[Msys2-users] Announcing the MSYS2 installer and new folder layout (migration instructions included).

[Ray D. <min...@gm...>]

Hi,

We're happy (and due to the migration trouble a little sorry) to
announce the new MSYS2 installers and the new folder layout that we've
adopted.

In the past /usr and / were bind-mounted to the same location and this
was horrible. We inherited this layout from the old MSYS and some
users rightly complained about it:

https://sourceforge.net/p/msys2/tickets/15
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge/

.. although Pacman is technically capable of managing such changes,
they were too invasive and we unfortunately updated a few core
packages in the MSYS2 repository making them incompatible with
existing installations (apologies to people who updated their entire
systems in the last day!).

Therefore, you should migrate your old MSYS2 install to the new
installer ASAP. To do this:

Run your existing MSYS2 and make a list of the packages you installed:

pacman -Qqe | xargs echo > /c/packages.txt
exit

Rename your MSYS2 base folder to something like msys32.old or
msys64.old (so you can use the cached packages from it later and also
in-case you forgot some old files).

Install the new MSYS2 ..
.. either from the installers:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/x86_64/msys2-x86_64-20140624.exe/download
http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/i686/msys2-i686-20140624.exe/download
(the installers will automatically do the first-run of MSYS2 for you,
but you *MUST* let this complete before you select "Finish" -
particularly if you leave "Run MSYS2 now." checked)

.. or from the xz files:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/x86_64/msys2-base-x86_64-20140624.tar.xz/download
http://sourceforge.net/projects/msys2/files/Base/i686/msys2-base-i686-20140624.tar.xz/download

to save server bandwidth and time, you can copy your old cached
package files from your old MSYS2 to the new one. In Explorer, copy
all the files from msys32.old\var\cache\pacman\pkg (or msys64.old) to
msys32\var\cache\pacman\pkg (or msys64)

Run the new MSYS2 via msys2_shell.bat and to install you old packages
again, enter:

pacman -S --needed --force $(cat /c/packages.txt)

Enjoy!