Install and maintain Cygwin without Windows admin rights

These are the steps I used:

1. Download setup-x86.exe (32bit) or setup-x86_64.exe (64bit).
2. Run it with the “--no-admin” option
3. During installation select the “wget” package
4. Create /usr/local/bin/cygwin-setup.sh (for 32bit omit the “_64”):

   #! /bin/sh
   rm setup-x86_64.exe
   wget http://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe
   chmod u+x setup-x86_64.exe
   run ./setup-x86_64.exe --no-admin
   

5. Make the script executable:

   chmod ugo+x /usr/local/bin/cygwin-setup.sh

6. Create a copy of the Cygwin terminal shortcut, rename it “Cygwin setup”
7. Edit the shortcut target, replace

   mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico -

   with

   mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico /bin/bash -l -c 'cygwin-setup.sh'

Whenever you want to run the Cygwin installer to install or remove packages, you can just execute the shortcut or run cygwin-setup.sh from the Cygwin command prompt.

Alternatively, you could also use the pure command-line tool apt-cyg.