Windows Support

[siennathesane]

Great project! I'm a Windows guy, so naturally I tried it on Windows in PowerShell. Works for me with go build -v -o wtf.exe or go install -v since I didn't have make installed.

There are some areas that do need fixing, but I wanted to start a top level issue with some of what I see out of the box with a vanilla config:

• [] Bad Character Encoding in the box headers.
• [] Linux-specific tools used.
• [] Makefile only works on Linux.

You can see some of the issues in the screenshot. If you can point me to where that code exists, I might be able to help make it work as intended on Windows.

[senorprogrammer]

For the title characters, those are all hard-coded into the widgets themselves as unicode characters (i.e.: https://github.com/senorprogrammer/wtf/blob/bbdc860625ed45001bdc8bd737eb3643a5baba33/bamboohr/widget.go#L19).

Security is entirely macOS-specific, however extracting that into platform-specific code shouldn't be too tough. Same with the build settings.

OS and Build are macOS-specific, in the System module, a file called system_info.go. Rename that to macos.go, add a Windows-specific version, and branch in widget.go here https://github.com/senorprogrammer/wtf/blob/bbdc860625ed45001bdc8bd737eb3643a5baba33/system/widget.go#L30 and that shouldn't be too tough to get working either.

[siennathesane]

Gotcha, I will see how it goes, thanks!

[jon-peel]

@mxplusb is it possible to distribute a Windows binary if you have already built it, or would it need to built per machine?

[siennathesane]

@Thorocaine depends on the license @senorprogrammer has, but once it's built, I'm sure it can get distributed by someone. :)

[senorprogrammer]

If the MIT license doesn't support that (and I'm pretty sure it does), then I'll switch to a license that does. You should be able to distribute whatever you build.

[jon-peel]

I did manage to get it working (mostly) in Windows Subsystem for Linux.
The only thing that I have tried that doesn't show anything is the Calendar.

[siennathesane]

@Thorocaine go build -v -o wtf.exe works, there are just some weird nuances. If you are curious what support looks like, just take a look at #150.

[sspaink]

Is there an update on distributing Windows binaries? There isn't a Windows binary included in the current release. Are there maybe still activate tickets waiting for completion before distribution is possible?
Thanks!

[senorprogrammer]

I just added a Windows target to the .goreleaser config. Next release we'll see what happens. I'll update here when that's done.

[siennathesane]

@senorprogrammer there are some changes coming in 1905 that implement much better Terminal support and might make it a bit more feasible to do natively.

[senorprogrammer]

What does 1905 refer to?

[siennathesane]

1905 is the next release of Windows, comes out in May, it was delayed from March and was supposed to be 1903. Windows 10 is now released as Windows <2-digit year><2-digit month>, so 1809 is September 2018, 1903 is March 2019, 1905 would be May 2019. Very similar to the way Ubuntu is released.

The changes coming in 1905 include ConPTY, which is a native pseudo TTY for Windows, and it has support for Unicode, which is great. There is also a new open source Windows terminal (github.com/Microsoft/Terminal) that will have first-class support for ConPTY, which is super useful, because it'll fix a lot of the unicode struggles which exist now.

[senorprogrammer]

Ah cool. I don't have access to a Windows machine so any help that Windows users can provide in trying out WTF on Windows is much appreciated.

[senorprogrammer]

Has anyone still paying attention to this thread tried to get WTF running under Windows r1905 per @mxplusb's comment above? I'd love to know if you've had any success.

[siennathesane]

I can take a look at it later today (assuming I remember).

[siennathesane]

Here is what it looks like under build 18936. About the same as when I filed this issue.

[siennathesane]

Apparently I spoke too soon, it just panicked.

panic: runtime error: index out of range
goroutine 23 [running]:
github.com/rivo/tview.(*TextView).Draw(0xc42018c410, 0xc629e0, 0xc42007b380)
/mnt/p/go/src/github.com/rivo/tview/textview.go:738 +0x13cc github.com/rivo/tview.(*Grid).Draw(0xc420170360, 0xc629e0, 0xc42007b380)
/mnt/p/go/src/github.com/rivo/tview/grid.go:582 +0x1514 github.com/rivo/tview.(*Pages).Draw(0xc4201843f0, 0xc629e0, 0xc42007b380)                                                                                                /mnt/p/go/src/github.com/rivo/tview/pages.go:246 +0xf9 github.com/rivo/tview.(*Application).Draw(0xc4201803f0, 0x0)                                                                                                        /mnt/p/go/src/github.com/rivo/tview/application.go:265 +0xcf main.redrawApp(0xc4201803f0)
/mnt/p/go/src/github.com/senorprogrammer/wtf/wtf.go:94 +0xd1 created by main.main
/mnt/p/go/src/github.com/senorprogrammer/wtf/wtf.go:231 +0x330

[doxxx]

This is what the sample config looks like in Windows 10 1903 in the new Windows Terminal beta:

It flickers every time it updates, which is probably a Windows Terminal problem.

EDIT: The blue background is from the default Windows Terminal configuration for the Powershell profile.

[siennathesane]

@doxxx can you try it in PSCore 6?

[doxxx]

Using PSCore 6 in Windows Terminal it looks the same, and flickers as well.

However, using PSCore 6 in the default Windows console, the box characters look better:

However, it still flickers on update.

[siennathesane]

That's really strange it flickers. @bitcrazed any reason you can think of that would cause an application to flicker on the default terminal?

[bitcrazed]

Sorry - tough to follow: What flickers and when? If you can repro, please find/file an issue in the Terminal repo: https://github.com/microsoft/terminal.

Thx.

[doxxx]

The entire WTF UI visibly repaints once a second -- probably when the data displayed is updated. It also happens in bursts during startup, which lends credence to the on data update theory. This occurs for me in PowerShell 5 and 6 in both the normal Windows console and the new Windows Terminal, on Windows 10 1903.

If I can figure out how to capture a video demonstrating it, I'll post it.

[doxxx]

So, this is interesting. I originally reported this bug from my work laptop, running Windows 10 Enterprise 1903. I just tried it at home on Windows 10 Home 1903 using PowerShell 5 in Windows Terminal, and it does not flicker.

So there's something else at play here.

[doxxx]

I noticed something else, just a small bug:

The top right corner of the box is not drawn correctly. If I resize the window, I can briefly see that it's drawing the top of the box one character too long, so the corner box character is being cut off on the right side of the window.

[siennathesane]

I checked this on my Mac with dev, and I didn't see this behaviour, so it must be specific to Windows.

If I remember, I will check on this either later tonight or tomorrow. Seems Windows-specific. I have a few theories but will have to do some digging and testing.

[ragebflame]

I am seeing the flickering also.

• Windows 7
• Cmder v1.3.12

[glennsarti]

So it looks like WTF cannot even be built on Windows anymore from v0.33.0 onwards 😢😢😢. My suspicion is e23cec2 has broken it due to .Start not being exposed on Windows systems.

Also creack/pty does not appear to support Windows correctly anyway (creack/pty#95)

After reading through the comments something that struck me was the conflating of Shell, Terminal and Console. (yay for naming things!). e.g. Using PowerShell (the shell) in the newer Windows Terminal (which has the pty support). doxx did a good job differentiating that in their testing. Need to be careful of that.

C:\Source\tmp\wtf [master ≡]> git reset --hard v0.33.0
HEAD is now at b333a149 Update CHANGELOG.md
C:\Source\tmp\wtf [master ↓82]> go install
go: downloading github.com/xanzy/go-gitlab v0.38.1
...
# github.com/wtfutil/wtf/modules/cmdrunner
modules\cmdrunner\widget.go:146:12: undefined: pty.Start
C:\Source\tmp\wtf [master ↓82]> git reset --hard v0.32.0
HEAD is now at 9c9446fc fixing goreleaser config
C:\Source\tmp\wtf [master ↓182]> go install -v
go: downloading github.com/gdamore/tcell v1.3.0
...
C:\Source\tmp\wtf [master ↓182]> 

[bitcrazed]

@glennsarti:

something that struck me was the conflating of Shell, Terminal and Console. (yay for naming things!)

TELL ME ABOUT IT! :) This is one of the reasons I wrote a multi-part blog series on the history, evolution, and internal architecture of the Windows command-line, concluding with the post announcing the new ConPTY.

Alas, for naming, I often say:

As per my prior suggestion (though I don't see this issue referenced in the Terminal repo right now) - if you're able to reliably repro this problem, please do file an issue in the Windows Terminal repo. This is where the team that owns the legacy Windows Console, the new Windows Terminal, and all of Windows' Command-line infrastructure live. If this is an issue with the Console/Terminal, as opposed, for example, to VT causing an expected full refresh, the team will be happy to work with you to figure out a fix, as schedules etc. allow.

Also note that since Terminal is open-source, and should you be sufficiently interested in this issue, you can also clone and build your own Windows Terminal and set breakpoints to debug the issue and find out what's causing the full-frame refresh.

HTH.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[eabase]

Any news here? I don't see why there would be an issue on windows. I was using this before.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.