add packages-dir custom option

[vszakats]

To allow making installation a little bit faster by using the faster
D: drive on GitHub Windows runner machines.

Fixes #7

[vszakats]

On GitHub Windows runner machines, the D: drive has significantly better write performance than C:. Performance also seems more consistent between runs. As observed in curl CI: https://github.com/curl/curl/actions/workflows/windows.yml?query=branch%3Amaster

In curl, by installing Cygwin to the non-default D:\Cygwin location, install times went down from 2-4 minutes to 1-1.5 consistently: https://github.com/curl/curl/actions/runs/14034331710, curl/curl@468bfc2, curl/curl#16813

Since the installation involves downloading packages to the package directory first, moving those to D: may further improve performance, esp. with large packages.

Is there interest in this PR?

(It might also be worth considering to move the default install dir to D:\Cygwin for Cygwin itself)

[vszakats]

There seems to be no interest in this, therefore closing.

I still think this (and moving the default install dir to D:) would very low-cost ways to boost Cygwin install performance, which for now is abysmal. Speaking of curl CI jobs, Cygwin was traditionally the slowest, by a good margin. It'd be nice to improve on that.

[gstrauss]

@vszakats I filed #27 to follow-up

[vszakats]

@gstrauss Thanks, it's looking good and I like it better than this attempt.

[gstrauss]

Then again, depending on caching for github runners, this approach might turn out to be better for #7. However, I'm not diving into that. Just looking for some low-hanging fruit in #27.

[vszakats]

One thing I didn't test (or think of to be frank) is how performance changes if the package and install drive is the same. In such case the drive needs to be read and written at the same time. Perhaps it'd be nice to allow setting them to different drives to be able to test for that, or configure it that way if it may hurt performance, e.g on a spinning disk.

#27 seems to allow that if I'm reading correctly.

[gstrauss]

There has never been a time on Windows where doing more read/write to C: improves performance. It has always been better to locate the swap file elsewhere, and to put data somewhere other than the partition containing \Windows. As with anything performance related, please do test and measure. Using D:\ should be no worse than using C:, and could be measurably better.

[vszakats]

To test and measure we need options to configure these separately.

[gstrauss]

To test and measure we need options to configure these separately.

Feel free to fork this repo or my fork, make some modifications, add some measurement tests to .github/workflows/test.yml, and then push to your fork. Then view the results of the CI at https://github.com/vszakats/cygwin-install-action/actions/

[vszakats]

Nah, sorry, I don't feel the good vibes around here for that kind of work :(

edit: besides, this Action might be run on external or paid runners, where the disk layout / perf may be different from what GitHub's free runners offer. That's why it's useful to have everything configurable. Also forking this repo isn't really a good or friendly way to change configuration, though of course "possible".

[gstrauss]

Nah, sorry, I don't feel the good vibes around here for that kind of work :(

Seems like that is a reflection of you and your participation. Why should other people take your dictation and do more work for you? An amateur could implement your dictates, and so an amateur should.

Also forking this repo isn't really a good or friendly way to change configuration, though of course "possible".

You seem to have a serious misunderstanding of what it means to "test", and how a fork is used on github to create a pull request (PR).

[vszakats]

Look, I started with a fork to test this, followed by this (and another) pull request. None did pick up interest. It's okay.
Wishing you luck with your iteration on this, but I have no capacity to chew on this more. Your message also reinforced how I felt about this initially.

[jon-turney]

None did pick up interest.

I'm sorry if you didn't receive an instant response to your PR and this caused you to experience negative vibrations, but no-one is paid to work on this and sometimes RL takes priority for our volunteers.

Thanks anyway. 🫡