How do I install cygwin components from the command line?

For a more convenient installer, you may want to use apt-cyg as your package manager. Its syntax similar to apt-get, which is a plus. For this, follow the above steps and then use Cygwin Bash for the following steps

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg/master/apt-cyg
chmod +x apt-cyg
mv apt-cyg /usr/local/bin

Now that apt-cyg is installed. Here are few examples of installing some packages

apt-cyg install nano
apt-cyg install git
apt-cyg install ca-certificates

Cygwin's setup accepts command-line arguments to install packages from the command-line.

e.g. setup-x86.exe -q -P packagename1,packagename2 to install packages without any GUI interaction ('unattended setup mode').

(Note that you need to use setup-x86.exe or setup-x86_64.exe as appropriate.)

See https://cygwin.com/packages/ for the package list.

There is no tool specifically in the 'setup.exe' installer that offers the functionality of apt-get. There is, however, a command-line package installer for Cygwin that can be downloaded separately, but it is not entirely stable and relies on workarounds.

apt-cyg: http://github.com/transcode-open/apt-cyg

Check out the issues tab for the project to see the known problems.