How to create an offline installer for Cygwin. Many times we have to use some programs that are not really designed for Windows but are designed exclusively for Linux users. For such programs, you can install any version of Linux such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc., or you can install Cygwin on your Windows PC.
Cygwin is the closest Linux experience you can have on your PC without installing any type of Linux on your computer. It has a large collection of open source programs that are transferred to Windows to provide functionality similar to that of Linux for Windows users. Unfortunately, Cygwin offers a web-based installer online, that is, you must download the different packages each time you choose to install it on your PC. But you can still manage to have your own package repository to use it as many times as you want at any later time. Here is how:
1: Create a folder on your hard drive to store the Cygwin repository. For example, I created E: \ Cygwin.
2: Download the Cygwin installer from the Cygwin website and save it in the same folder that you just created. There are 32-bit and 64-bit installers for Cygwin, so you should choose properly. In my case, I downloaded setup-x86.exe because I have 32-bit Windows.
3: Start the downloaded Cygwin installer and choose the Download without installing option when prompted and then click on the Next button.
4: Choose the Directory of local packages to be the same folder that you created previously in step 1 above and proceed by clicking on the Next button.
5: Choose one of the duplicates from the list to download the packages. I prefer the kernel.org server since it always works and has the latest version of Cygwin packages ready to download.
6: When it comes to selecting the packages, you can change the Default packages to Install for All as shown in the following image. You can also choose any other special package not selected by default, for example, "nurses" packages.
7: It will take some time to download all the selected packages. Meanwhile, you can go out and take a breath of fresh air or have a cup of hot coffee that you've been waiting for since morning.
8: When the download completes, close the Cygwin configuration window and start the configuration again. This time, you can choose to install from the local directory and then select the package folder that you created in step 1 above. All packages will be installed from your hard drive instead of from the Internet.
By choosing to download and save packages from Cygwin repositories on the Internet, you can create your own local repository for offline use. But this local repository has one drawback: it will not be updated unless you make the effort to keep it updated.
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