Distribute zipped Windows binaries?

[rgwood]

I'd love to start messing around with Notcurses on Windows. But I've found MSYS2 to be a barrier - I had some install issues and tbh it just feels a bit alien to me as a Windows developer. I totally get the appeal for *nix-centric projects and developers, that's just not me.

However, I don't have any real need to build from source - I'd be fine with prebuilt DLLs+EXEs. The package manager situation on Windows is... complicated, but one simple option might be to just publish a zip of the Windows build output with each GitHub release.

P.S. Notcurses is incredibly cool and I love the demos you've built for it. Keep up the fantastic work :)

[dankamongmen]

aye, i intend to distribute Windows binaries as soon as i understand the Windows ecosystem and experience better (here, as i have many times, i will point out the irony of my employment at Microsoft). windows dev has been very strange in my recent experience. like, there's no shared lib folder that everyone develops against? you just copy your own libs into your own directory? and then assume everything you build against is in that build directory? then redistribute the libs you need? madness.

i would recommend you to #2071, but you just commented there =]. #1966 is probably also relevant.

thank you for the kind words, and i'll be frank: windows knowledge is in very, very short supply on this project. #1966 wants a Visual Studio project file and some directions. put that together for us, and you've just become an essential contributor. and with that, i'd have a much better understanding of what and how to install.

like, if people are building against their own copies, i'd assume you just want DLLs in a ZIP, which you can unpack where you'd like. do you even typically have an installer for libraries in this environment?

help me rgwood i have no idea what i'm doing i am eight

[dankamongmen]

but if you want working POSIX code reimplemented wholesale with Windows code....i mean, just to keep my own limited sanity, and not have two distinct paths everywhere i touch an os resource, i'd end up reinventing cygwin anyway.

[dankamongmen]

i like supporting windows, and am eager to do so as best i can, but have no misconceptions -- if this project was a liferaft floating around in the northern atlantic wherein we dined on a dwindling supply of hi-c ecto cooler, and there weren't enough ecto coolers and assfloat to go around, i'm kicking windows out the boat. it's not my fault they looked at the great vista (pun not intended) of POSIX interfaces and said "nahhhh son we need capital letters DWORD is bond".

they. we, i mean. damnit, nicholas, we.

[rgwood]

Yup, that all makes sense. Windows is the odd one out here and I'm fully behind any approach that lets you support Windows while still maintaining your sanity. Personally I think an MSYS2-first build is reasonable even if it's not the most "native" way of doing things.

I might try to build Notcurses with MSBuild and Visual Studio sometime , but I am not optimistic about my chances of success (partially due to missing knowledge on my part, partially because working with MSBuild setup tends to be... draining).

[WSLUser]

are they going to get the ms-terminal entry updated? they don't implement the entirety of xterm-256color =[

Well there's an issue for them to update it. I know they plan to at some point but they likely want several architectural design changes first such as their text buffer 2021 issue or creating ConPTY pass-through mode to enable VT sequences such as DCS to work for terminals that take a dependency on ConPTY.

[WSLUser]

Also if they're missing a feature that hasn't already been filed, they welcome issues tied to use-cases. If notcurses needs something Windows doesn't yet have, let them know and someone will get to it eventually and of course they'll accept contributions as they do intend on being completely compatible with that term within reason.