native windows compatibility: worth progressing?

[sfinnie]

I've been investigating above and would like to test support for progressing.

After patching the Makefile (#448), 11 tests fail. 3 of those are in the gitstorage module. I've a branch on my fork with candidate fixes for those but haven't yet submitted for a couple of reasons:

1. It means more complicated path handling. Windows use of \ as a path separator adds complexity; whilst os.path.* and pathlib accommodate it correctly, git - and hence gitpython - uses posix paths exclusively. That means some path gynmastics, e.g. using pathlib.Path(filename).as_posix() to create posix-compatible filenames before comparing with repo contents. Whilst the tests all now pass, I haven't yet done a thorough review to find any lurking issues.
2. I don't yet know what will be needed to resolve the remaining 8 failures.

I'm cautiously willing to progress: however I'd like to check first. All above adds complexity to the codebase to cope with windows path idiosyncrasies (refrained from using a stronger word). An alternative would be to say "only works on posix - if you want to run on windows, use wsl".

There is a potential issue in using a repo path in the mounted windows filesystem rather than the native wsl one. I haven't investigated that one yet. Limiting case, it means a wsl-native repo path.

Notwithstanding the repo path question I have confirmed all tests pass on wsl and the server, once running, is visible to browsers running on the windows host.

Thoughts welcome - thanks.

[redimp]

Hey @sfinnie, it is a valid question if it's worth to push being compatible to Windows.

Disclaimer: I have little no experience of developing in the windows eco system. Played around with WSL when it was new, but I don't think that counts.

I guess the number of people working on An Otter Wiki in Windows Environments is quite low. When one has to run it you can just run the Docker container. If one wants to develop under Windows and WSL works fine, I suggest to use it.

I lean to the "only works on posix" way.

[sfinnie]

thanks @redimp , makes complete sense. From a selfish point of view, windows is a work-imposed requirement rather than a choice and wsl meets my needs. My starting assumption was implicitly "native windows should be easy and is a good feature for the project": investigation has shown that's not true. Given there are routes for wsl and Docker, and the interest level is low, restricting to those choices seems appropriate.

[redimp]

Appreciate the effort! Please report any issues with WSL if you run into any.