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Native POSIX enviroment for Windows
Jun. 9th, 2022 09:48 amWhile WSL is great, I've always wanted a native POSIX environment for developing on Windows. I wanted one that didn't require specialized DLLs with GNU GPL licenses such as as Cygwin and MSYS do. There are other options available. Midipix provides a POSIX environment for easily porting and developing POSIX compliant applications on Windows. The licensing isn't any more lenient than Cygwin though. It does use the MUSL C library which is a nice feature. There's AT&T's Uwin project which is now available as Open Source: https://github.com/att/uwin The license for the project isn't exactly compatible with GPL software. I've looked into native POSIX shell alternatives to those found in projects like Cygwin and msys. Bash is not easy to port to Windows without Cygwin or msys DLLs to support various functionality. It isn't exactly easy to port to DOS either. Most bash ports to DOS and Windows are older ones. One Windows port that builds successfully on Windows with MinGW32 is: http://win-bash.sourceforge.net/ I investigated the mksh project at one point and even offered to work on a Windows port. They were not in the least bit interested and already had some commercial company looking to create a port to Windows using there own proprietary code to provide a POSIX compatibility layer. So even if their plan was successful, it wouldn't exactly provide a native Windows port anyone could use in their projects. Tcsh has support for Windows. Zsh was also very popular on Windows. Checking the versions of zsh, the latest Windows version I could find that compiled with no issues using MinGW32 was 3.0.8.1: https://github.com/oldfaber/wzsh The zsh project seems to have progressed to a much later version since then. I've also experimented with Swiss which provides a Busybox-like set of tools with a shell. Speaking of Busybox, there is a port of it to Windows which provides an implementation of the ash shell: https://github.com/rmyorston/busybox-w32 Unfortunately, the build system works in such a way that you need to cross-compile it to get anything to build properly. Even after attempting to cross-compile using the source code, I still ended up with a program that crashes on exit. The busybox-w32 executables at the official sites don't seem to have that problem though. So much for being able to reproduce an executable others are distributing just from the source code.
I have several programs that could replace a lot of the core and basic utilities found on POSIX systems. I even have an older version of make patched to work with a shell of my choice rather than requiring Cygwin or msys DLLs or producing a crippled native version of make that can't handle long command lines. I had discussed the option of getting make to work with other shells besides Cygwin or msys with the developers of make at one point. I had sent them a patch for an issue with using make natively on Windows without a shell. The developers weren't interested in Windows support beyond using Cygwin or msys bash shells. I have older versions of GNU autotools patched to run natively and work around the slash versus backslash file delimiter issues. So, I think I could put together a native POSIX environment for Windows that could be used for development with a command line compiler. However, I'm still left with the decision of how to replace the msys bash shell. It would be very nice to avoid Cygwin and msys and not have the limitations on directories that these programs impose. For instance, they assume / and /usr are in the same locations so /bin is the same directory and in the same physical locaton as /usr/bin. A Windows native POSIX shell option would be ideal. The only question is which shell to go with.
Likely Windows shell candidates at this point are older versions of bash, zsh and ash. It would be nice to find some other options or hear from others interested in native Windows development as to what their POSIX shells of choice might be. If anyone else is interested in developing natively on Windows using a POSIX-like environment, feel free to contact me to discuss the situation further, add your suggestions or brainstorm some new ideas: http://www.distasis.com/connect.htm I'd love to be able to put something together similar to the gnuwin32 or unxutils projects but with more up-to-date utilities. It would be great to have input from others looking to create or piece together their own POSIX development environments on Windows.
I have several programs that could replace a lot of the core and basic utilities found on POSIX systems. I even have an older version of make patched to work with a shell of my choice rather than requiring Cygwin or msys DLLs or producing a crippled native version of make that can't handle long command lines. I had discussed the option of getting make to work with other shells besides Cygwin or msys with the developers of make at one point. I had sent them a patch for an issue with using make natively on Windows without a shell. The developers weren't interested in Windows support beyond using Cygwin or msys bash shells. I have older versions of GNU autotools patched to run natively and work around the slash versus backslash file delimiter issues. So, I think I could put together a native POSIX environment for Windows that could be used for development with a command line compiler. However, I'm still left with the decision of how to replace the msys bash shell. It would be very nice to avoid Cygwin and msys and not have the limitations on directories that these programs impose. For instance, they assume / and /usr are in the same locations so /bin is the same directory and in the same physical locaton as /usr/bin. A Windows native POSIX shell option would be ideal. The only question is which shell to go with.
Likely Windows shell candidates at this point are older versions of bash, zsh and ash. It would be nice to find some other options or hear from others interested in native Windows development as to what their POSIX shells of choice might be. If anyone else is interested in developing natively on Windows using a POSIX-like environment, feel free to contact me to discuss the situation further, add your suggestions or brainstorm some new ideas: http://www.distasis.com/connect.htm I'd love to be able to put something together similar to the gnuwin32 or unxutils projects but with more up-to-date utilities. It would be great to have input from others looking to create or piece together their own POSIX development environments on Windows.
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