What is Cygwin?

• A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.
• A collection of tools, which provide Linux look and feel.

The Cygwin DLL currently works with all recent, commercially released x86 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows, with the exception of Windows CE.

What Isn't Cygwin?

• Cygwin is not a way to run native linux apps on Windows. You have to rebuild your application from source if you want it to run on Windows.
• Cygwin is not a way to magically make native Windows apps aware of UNIX © functionality, like signals, ptys, etc. Again, you need to build your apps from source if you want to take advantage of Cygwin functionality.

Help, contact, web page, other info...

Security Issues

Starting from version 2.573.2.3 of setup.exe a signing mecanism has been created (see cygwin-announce message): this will now PREVENT YOU FROM DOWNLOADING from CYGWIN::EL!!!

But this is not affecting my personal FR version of setup.exe as it was modified to add a second signing key (starting from version 2.602-2)!!!

Without taking action, the new version of the official setup.exe will refuse to install from CYGWIN::EL as it fails to find a valid signature for my customised setup.ini files. There are a number of option open to you and to deal with this situation.

This list summarizes the main possibilities, in decreasing order of worstness:

1. you must retain and use an old version of setup.exe to access my mirror. This old version will not complain about the lack of signature files.
2. supply the new -X (--no-verify) command-line flag when using setup.exe to download from my mirror. This can be added into the command-line invocation in a Windows shortcut, for convenience.
3. I have started to sign my custom-generated setup.ini and setup.bz2 files with gpg, and either solutions are possible:
   1. Converted my public key to s-expr format using the script gpg-key-to-s-expr.sh from the setup.exe sources (requires an installation of pgpdump), this key is available to you (s-expr-GPG-KEY-lassauge.txt), and you'll have to specify it as the argument to the -S command-line option (can be done using a shortcut to save repetition).
   2. With this converted public key in s-expr format, you'll have either to use the -S option once to load it into the untrusted keys cache and the -U option subsequently.
   3. I distributed my public key file to you in binary gpg format (CYG-GPG-KEY-lassauge.pub), and you'll have to use the -K command-line option to point at it, either every time, or just initially to load it into the untrusted keys cache, followed by use of -U on subsequent occasions.
4. More simply: use the latest version of setup-fr.exe as it contains in addition to the cygwin ones the key used for signing my custom-generated setup.ini and setup.bz2 files.

The public key is also available from CYG-GPG-KEY-lassauge.txt and can be used to verify your initial download of setup-fr.exe from CYGWIN::EL; download the .sig file and the .exe to the same directory, and run gpg --verify setup-fr.exe.sig from a Bash or other shell command-line.
You can import the key to your gpg keyring by running gpg --import CYG-GPG-KEY-lassauge.txt

What is CYGWIN::EL?

• See warning above.
• Fill the "user URL" field of the "Choose Download Site(s)" dialog with: http://lassauge.free.fr/cygwin ;
• Press [Add] ;
• Then [Next >] ;
• 
• ... that's it !

Disclaimer

My Cygwin packages are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Library general Public License for more details.