Essential Cygwin Development Packages

Whenever I want to do a new Cygwin install on Windows, I’d have to just keep scrolling the Cygwin installer window to find the packages that I use frequently. I decided to compile a list of packages I use and put them here so that I wouldn’t have to waste time on it again in the future.

• Devel:
  1. cmake
  2. cmake-gui
  3. gcc-core
  4. gcc-g++
  5. gdb
  6. git
  7. make
• Libs:
  1. libboost-devel
• Python:
  1. python3
• Shells:
  1. chere (for shell integration)
• X11: (Needed for cmake-gui)
  1. gnu-free-fonts
  2. xinit

Additionally, I let Cygwin’s installer to auto-install additional required packages. These packages should be sufficient for compiling C/C++ code under Windows. In order to enable shell integration for bringing up a Cygwin terminal, this command should be executed from Cygwin terminal (using administrator privileges) after installation:

chere -i -t mintty