Windows Support

[hammy275]

tarstall support for Windows would be really awesome!

Going to see if this is possible to do without #44 (as it looks like Python can handle mapping ~ in Windows along with Linux).

[hammy275]

Due to Windows locking files that are in use, some operations will sadly require a Windows restart to perform successfully:

• tarstall updates
• Removal of tarstall

Nonzero chance I may add a "hidden" option (you'll need to edit the database file manually, since this isn't something I'd want people to use unless they actively seek it out) where you can run a .bat file in ~/.tarstall to update, so you don't need to restart.

[hammy275]

To solve the problem above, I'm writing a small library which can be found here. Once I feel it's in a stable enough state to warrant a "1.0.0" release, I'll get its installation implemented in tarstall's setup program.

[hammy275]

Even with python-movefile-restart written, I feel I want to move to a different solution involving WSL. This way, I don't have to maintain a codebase built for Linux with Windows support slapped on top at nearly every corner, and can rather mostly focus on the Linux side of things.

[hammy275]

I don't have a lot of time, and tarstall is a very large project.

I had originally intended to port tarstall to Windows because of myself switching to Windows, but I haven't found any use for tarstall on Windows, and I plan to switch back to Linux soon. I'm going to keep a backup of progress made on the Windows version (probably in another branch or something similar), but will no longer be working towards tarstall Linux support.

EDIT: Will close this issue once I have the Windows-specific changes migrated to another branch.

[hammy275]

Windows support has been moved to a separate branch, win-support. Going to close this issue now.

[hammy275]

With WSL receiving GUI support in Windows' "dev" branch (and probably to be released with 21H2), I'm going to be exploring this again, hopefully getting it out as the "big feature" for 1.7. I want to go back to my original vision of tarstall still running in WSL, but communicating with Windows to do things.

What makes this massively easier in comparison to before, is with the Windows <--> Linux GUI support, Microsoft baked in .desktop support for explorer, meaning tarstall can create .desktop files as usual, and let them point to Windows executables.

[hammy275]

Looks like Windows only checks for .desktops in /usr/share/applications, and it looks like .desktop files don't like .exe files.

Maybe we can have a feature for WSL users to create .desktops there (would require sudo, sadly), which would point to a "launcher" script, which would handle launching the executable.

[hammy275]

I don't know where I saw the need for a launcher script, it's definitely not needed.

Still need to put .desktops in /usr/share/applications though :/