Release Notes for mingw-get-0.1-mingw32-alpha-1 $Id$ Preamble -------- This is the first alpha release of the next generation MinGW installer, mingw-get; it provides a more readily extensible, and more configurable alternative to the existing MinGW-5.1.x series of NSIS installers, for installing MinGW packages. mingw-get is free software. Permission is granted to copy, modify and redistribute it, 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 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 authors, or the MinGW Project, accept liability for any damages, however caused, arising from the use of this software. At the time of this release, mingw-get is still in the early stages of development; this release provides an opportunity for early adopters to evaluate the CLI capabilities of the installer component; please report bugs, (but please, not the known issues identified below), to the MinGW bug tracker: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=2435&atid=102435 Installation ------------ 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-0.1-mingw32-alpha-1-bin.zip or: mingw-get-0.1-mingw32-alpha-1-bin.tar.gz and unpack it into the directory in which you intend to host your MinGW installation, (the standard default of C:\MinGW [*] is recommended), then use your preferred method for assignment of environmet variables to add the appropriate directory, (default C:\MinGW\bin), to your PATH. [*] If you insist on adopting a different directory from the recommended default, you are *strongly* recommended 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 within "C:\Program Files", usually discover, to their cost, that certain tools do not work correctly. Configuration ------------- If you have installed mingw-get in the default location, you will find its primary configuration file at: C:\MinGW\var\lib\mingw-get\data\profile.xml (if you chose a different location, replace "C:\MinGW" with your chosen installation prefix directory path name). This is a liberally commented XML file, which you are free to modify 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 to match your choice for your mingw-get installation, if you chose not to adopt the default, in which case you will probably also prefer an alternative choice for the MSYS subsystem, if you intend to install that). If you do choose to modify the configuration, you are advised to keep a backup copy of your modified version, since, particularly during the alpha phase of development, it may be necessary to overwrite your local version with an updated distributed version, then fold in your changes once more. Invocation ---------- Invoking mingw-get from the command line, without arguments, is intended to launch a GUI variant of the application, (but currently, this mode is not supported; if you try it, you *will* see only an error message). To invoke the CLI variant of mingw-get, the syntax is: mingw-get [-option ...] action [package ...] Currently supported options are: -version display the version banner, and exit Currently supported actions are: update synchronise the locally cached version of the distribution manifest with the version held at the repository. install package ... install the specified package(s), and any necessary prerequisites. upgrade package ... upgrade package(s) from the installed version to the newest version available, (if not already at the newest version). remove package ... uninstall package(s). Currently known packages are: mingwrt the mingw32 runtime libraries. w32api the MS-Windows API bindings for mingw32. binutils the GNU binary file utilities. gcc the GNU C Compiler (currently v3.4.5) g++ the C++ front-end for GCC-3.4.5 g77 the FORTRAN-77 front-end for GCC-3.4.5 ada the Ada front-end for GCC-3.4.5 java the java front-end for GCC-3.4.5 objc the Objective-C front-end for GCC-3.4.5 mingw32-make native MS-Win32 build of GNU make. Known Issues ------------ Please do not file bug reports, in respect of the following issues: 1) Cannot start in GUI mode; the error message you see, when you try, is expected behaviour, in current alpha releases. 2) "remove" action does not uninstall anything; the uninstaller function is currently a stub, so this is expected behaviour. 3) Package list needs updating, for more recent releases; we hope to address this progressively, in coming weeks. Please check the online release notes/announcements, and run "mingw-get update" periodically. 4) Need an action to list available/installed packages. 5) Additional features you would like to see added; we want to know your ideas, but please raise them for discussion on the mailing-list first.