Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
1–10 of 349 posts
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#2Are symlinks on Windows really such a big issue? I’ve never heard of projects using symlinks in their tree. If Windows developers are complaining about you doing something unusual, why is it their fault?
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#3Are symlinks on Windows really such a big issue? I’ve never heard of projects using symlinks in their tree. If Windows developers are complaining about you doing something unusual, why is it their fault?
Certainly better to avoid it if at all possible, and I'll be eliminating them specifically to improve Windows compatibility.
It's not that unusual, though, a quick search turns up 1.1k GitHub repositories with `git config core.symlinks true` in their documentation or CI pipelines - including quite popular projects like Ava, Apache Arrow, Solana, Chrome Devtools, adobe-fonts, IBM/houdinID, travis-ci, RabbitMQ, various Google projects & more.
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#4Are symlinks on Windows really such a big issue? I’ve never heard of projects using symlinks in their tree. If Windows developers are complaining about you doing something unusual, why is it their fault?
Certainly better to avoid it if at all possible, and I'll be eliminating them specifically to improve Windows compatibility. It's not that unusual, though, a quick search turns up 1.1k GitHub repositories with `git config core.symlinks true` in their documentation or CI pipelines - including quite popular projects like Ava, Apache Arrow, Solana, Chrome Devtools, adobe-fonts, IBM/houdinID, travis-ci, RabbitMQ, various…
I agree that Windows could do more to support the developers on other platforms. Symlinks just seem like a petty thing to complain about IMHO. Didn’t realize how common they were though.
NTFS does support them, however. Is Git just not supporting them properly?
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#5Microsoft's days as a 'primary' desktop operating system are numbered. The OP doesn't seem to understand this, but even Microsoft itself does, which is why most of its major moves the past few years haven't been improving its own desktop, but positioning itself to control "open source" the best it can.
More people within the MS ecosystem should understand this.
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#6Are symlinks on Windows really such a big issue? I’ve never heard of projects using symlinks in their tree. If Windows developers are complaining about you doing something unusual, why is it their fault?
Certainly better to avoid it if at all possible, and I'll be eliminating them specifically to improve Windows compatibility. It's not that unusual, though, a quick search turns up 1.1k GitHub repositories with `git config core.symlinks true` in their documentation or CI pipelines - including quite popular projects like Ava, Apache Arrow, Solana, Chrome Devtools, adobe-fonts, IBM/houdinID, travis-ci, RabbitMQ, various…
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Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly better to avoid it if at all possible, and I'll be eliminating them specifically to improve Windows compatibility. It's not that unusual, though, a quick search turns up 1.1k GitHub repositories with `git config core.symlinks true` in their documentation or CI pipelines - including quite popular projects like Ava, Apache Arrow, Solana, Chrome Devtools, adobe-fonts, IBM/houdinID, travis-ci, RabbitMQ, various…
I agree that Windows could do more to support the developers on other platforms. Symlinks just seem like a petty thing to complain about IMHO. Didn’t realize how common they were though. NTFS does support them, however. Is Git just not supporting them properly?
That's exactly it. Windows developers know NTFS has Symbolic Links https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/creati...
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly better to avoid it if at all possible, and I'll be eliminating them specifically to improve Windows compatibility. It's not that unusual, though, a quick search turns up 1.1k GitHub repositories with `git config core.symlinks true` in their documentation or CI pipelines - including quite popular projects like Ava, Apache Arrow, Solana, Chrome Devtools, adobe-fonts, IBM/houdinID, travis-ci, RabbitMQ, various…
I agree that Windows could do more to support the developers on other platforms. Symlinks just seem like a petty thing to complain about IMHO. Didn’t realize how common they were though. NTFS does support them, however. Is Git just not supporting them properly?
Well, it feels 'petty' and simple until:
1. You run into it, go "AH, wow, okay, I'll enable Developer Mode"
2. It still doesn't work, you're confused, you Google around a bit more and find out actually you also need to use a Git config option
3. You retry, now the symlinks work, but your compiler fails because "Destination Path Too Long", huh, that's weird
4. You google a bit more, and discover you need to set a registry option. So you do it, but you still get that error..
5. You discover there's another Git option you need to set
And then you're like, hey, what was I doing again? Where did the last hour of my time go? It's death by a thousand paper cuts.
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#9Are symlinks on Windows really such a big issue? I’ve never heard of projects using symlinks in their tree. If Windows developers are complaining about you doing something unusual, why is it their fault?
The higher level thing to notice is that Windows is a second class platform for much of the software world. As such, it is in a position where it needs to bend the knee for compatibility with the dominant platform if they want it to be an active player in the larger ecosystem. In the case of symlinks, the hard part is already done, to the point where it is a toggle that has already been implemented, the UX of enabling it is just bad.
Re: Cross-compiling binaries for Windows is easier than building natively
#10Microsoft's days as a 'primary' desktop operating system are numbered. The OP doesn't seem to understand this, but even Microsoft itself does, which is why most of its major moves the past few years haven't been improving its own desktop, but positioning itself to control "open source" the best it can. More people within the MS ecosystem should understand this.
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