Windows pain (#336)
* blog: start on windows pain post Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website> * flags Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website> * more Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website> * yse Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>
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title: "Development on Windows is Painful"
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date: 2021-03-03
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tags:
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- windows
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- vscode
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- nix
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- emacs
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- rant
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---
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# Development on Windows is Painful
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<big>SUBJECTIVITY WARNING</big>
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This post contains opinions. They may differ from the opinions you hold, and
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that's great. This post is not targeted at any individual person or
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organization. This is a record of my frustration at trying to get Windows to do
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what I consider "basic development tasks". Your experiences can and probably
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will differ. As a reminder, I am speaking for myself, not any employer (past,
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present and future). I am not trying to shit on anyone here or disregard the
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contributions that people have made. This is coming from a place of passion for
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the craft of computering.
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With me using VR more and more [with my Quest 2 set up with
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SteamVR](/blog/convoluted-vrchat-gchat-setup-2021-02-24), I've had to use
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windows more on a regular basis. It seems that in order to use [Virtual
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Desktop](https://www.vrdesktop.net), I **MUST** have Windows as the main OS on
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my machine for this to work. Here is a record of my pain and suffering trying to
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do what I consider "basic" development tasks.
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## Text Editor
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I am a tortured soul that literally thinks in terms of Vim motions. This allows
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me to be mostly keyboard-only when I am deep into hacking at things, which
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really helps maintain flow state because I do not need to move my hands or look
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at anything but the input line right in front of me. Additionally, I have gotten
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_very_ used to my Emacs setup, and specifically the subtle minutae of how it
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handles its Vim emulation mode and all of the quirks involved.
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I have tried to use my Emacs config on Windows (and barring the things that are
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obviously impossible such as getting Nix to work with Windows) and have
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concluded that it is a fantastic waste of my time to do this. There are just too
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many things that have to be changed from my Linux/macOS config. That's okay, I
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can just use [VSCode](https://code.visualstudio.com) like a bunch of apologists
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have been egging me into right? It's worked pretty great for doing work stuff on
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NixOS, so it should probably be fine on Windows, right?
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### Vim Emulation
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So let's try opening VSCode and activating the Vim plugin
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[vscodevim](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=vscodevim.vim).
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I get that installed (and the gruvbox theme because I absolutely love the
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Gruvbox aesthetics) and then open VSCode in a new folder. I can `:open` a new
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file and then type something in it. Then I want to open another file split to
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the left with `:vsplit`, so I press escape and type in `:vsplit bar.txt`.
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Then I get a vsplit of the current buffer, not the new file that I actually
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wanted. Now, this is probably a very niche thing that I am used to (even though
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it works fine on vanilla vim and with evil-mode), and other people I have asked
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about this apparently do not open new files like that (and one was surprised to
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find out that worked at all); but this is a pretty heavily ingrained into my
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muscle memory thing and it is frustrating. I have to retrain my decade old
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buffer management muscle memory.
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#### Whichwrap
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Vim has a feature called whichwrap that lets you use the arrow keys at the
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end/beginning of lines to go to the beginning/end of the next/previous line. I
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had set this in my vim config [in November
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2013](https://github.com/Xe/dotfiles/commit/d8301453c2b61846eea8305b9ed4b80f498f3838)
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and promptly forgotten about it. This lead me to believe that this was Vim's
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default behavior.
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It apparently is not.
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In order to fix this, I had to open the VSCode settings.json file and add the
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following to it:
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```json
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{
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"vim.whichwrap": "h,l,<,>,[,]"
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}
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```
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Annoying, but setting this made it work like I expected.
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#### Kill Register != Clipboard
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Vim has the concept of registers, which are basically named/unnamed places that
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can be used like the clipboard in most desktop environments. In my Emacs config,
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the clipboard and the kill register* are identical. If I yank a region of text
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into the kill register, it's put into the clipboard. If I copy something into
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the clipboard, it's automagically put into the kill register. It's really
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convenient this way.
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[*It's called the "kill register" here because the vim motions for manipulating
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it are `y` to yank something into the kill register and `p` to put it into a
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different part of the document. `d` and other motions like it also put the
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things they remove into the kill register.](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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vscodevim doesn't do this by default, however there is another setting that you
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can use to do this:
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```json
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{
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"vim.useSystemClipboard": true
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}
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```
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And then you can get the kill register to work like you'd expect.
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### Load Order of Extensions
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Emacs lets you control the load order of extensions. This can be useful to have
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the project-local config extension load before the language support extension,
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meaning that the right environment variables can be set before the language
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server runs.
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As far as I can tell you just can't configure this. For a work thing I've had to
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resort to disabling the Go extension, reloading VSCode, waiting for the direnv
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settings to kick in and re-enabling the Go extension. This would be _so much
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easier_ if I could just say "hey you go after this is done", but apparently this
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is not something VSCode lets you control. Please correct me if I am wrong.
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## Development Tools
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This is probably where I'm going to get a lot more pedantic than I was
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previously. I'm used to [st](https://st.suckless.org) as my terminal emulator
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and [fish](https://fishshell.com) as my shell. This is actually a _really nice_
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combo in practice because st loads instantly and fish has some great features
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like autocomplete based on shell history. Not to mention st allowing you to
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directly select-to-copy and right-click to paste, which makes it even more
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convenient to move text around quickly.
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### Git
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Git is not a part of the default development tooling setup. This was surprising.
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When I installed Git manually from its website, I let it run and do its thing,
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but then I realized it installed its own copy of bash, perl and coreutils. This
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shouldn't have surprised me (a lot of Git's command line interface is written in
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perl and shell scripts), but it was the 3rd copy of bash that I had installed on
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the system.
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As a NixOS user, this probably shouldn't have bothered me. On NixOS I currently
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have at least 8 copies of bash correlating to various versions of my tower's
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configuration. However, those copies are mostly there so that I can revert
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changes and then be able to go back to an older system setup. This is 3 copies
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of bash that are all in active use, but they don't really know about eachother
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(and the programs that are using them are arguably correct in doing this really
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defensively with their own versions of things so that there's less of a
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compatibility tesseract).
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Once I got it set up though, I was able to do git operations as normal. I was
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also pleasantly surprised to find that ssh and more importantly ssh-keygen were
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installed by default on Windows. That was really convenient and probably avoided
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me having to install another copy of bash.
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### Windows Terminal
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Windows Terminal gets a lot of things very right and also gets a lot of things
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very wrong. I was so happy to see that it had claimed it was mostly compatible
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with xterm. My usual test for these things is to open a curses app that uses
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the mouse (such as Weechat or terminal Emacs) and click on things. This usually
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separates the wheat from the chaff when it comes to compatible terminal
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emulators. I used the SSH key from before to log into my server, connected to my
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long-standing tmux session and then clicked on a channel name in Weechat.
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Nothing happened.
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I clicked again to be sure, nothing happened.
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I was really confused, then I started doing some digging and found [this GitHub
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comment on the Windows Terminal
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repo](https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/376#issuecomment-759285574).
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Okay, so the version of ssh that came with Windows is apparently too old. I can
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understand that. When you bring something into the core system for things like
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Windows you generally need to lock it at an older version so that you can be
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sure that it says feature-compatible for years. This is not always the best life
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decision, but it's one of the tradeoffs you have to make when you have long-term
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support for things. It suggested I download a newer version of OpenSSH and tried
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using that.
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I downloaded the zipfile and I was greeted with a bunch of binaries in a folder
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with no obvious instructions on how to install them. Okay, makes sense, it's a
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core part of the system and this is probably how they get the binaries around to
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slipstream them into other parts of the Windows image build. An earlier comment
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in the thread suggested this was fixed with Windows Subsystem for Linux, so
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let's give that a try.
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### Windows Subsystem for Linux
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Windows Subsystem for Linux is a technical marvel. It makes dealing with Windows
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a lot easier. If only it didn't railroad you into Ubuntu in the process. Now
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don't get me wrong, Ubuntu works. It's boring. If you need to do something on a
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Linux system, nobody would get fired for suggesting Ubuntu. It just happens to
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not be the distro I want.
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However, I can ssh into my server with the Ubuntu VM and then I can click around
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in Weechat to my heart's content. I can also do weird builds with Nix and it
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just works. Neat.
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I should probably figure out how hard it would be to get a NixOS-like
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environment in WSL, but WSL can't run systemd so I've been kinda avoiding it.
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Excising systemd from NixOS really defeats most of the point in my book. I may
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end up installing Nix on Alpine or something. IDK.
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### PowerShell
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They say you can learn a lot about the design of a command line interface by
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what commands are used to do things like change directory, list files in a
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directory and download files from the internet. In PowerShell these are
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`Get-ChildItem`, `Set-Location` and `Invoke-WebRequest`. However there are
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aliases for `ls`, `dir`, `cd` and `wget` (these aliases aren't always
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flag-compatible, so you may want to actually get used to doing things in the
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PowerShell way if you end up doing anything overly fancy).
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Another annoying thing was that pressing Control-D on an empty prompt didn't end up closing the session. In order to do this you need to edit your shell profile file:
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```
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PS C:\Users\xena> code $profile
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```
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Then you add this to the .ps1 file:
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```
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Set-PSReadlineOption -EditMode Emacs
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```
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Save this file then close and re-open PowerShell.
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If this was your first time editing your PowerShell config (like it was for me)
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you are going to have to mess with your
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[execution policy](https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2702/setting-the-powershell-execution-policy/)
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to allow you to execute scrips on your local machine. I get the reason why they
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did this, PowerShell has a lot of...well...power over the system. Doing this
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must outright eliminate a lot of attack vectors without doing much on the
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admin's side. But this applies to your shell profile too. So you are going to
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need to make a choice as to what security level you want to have with PowerShell
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scripts. I personally went with `RemoteSigned`.
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### Themes
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I use stuff cribbed from [oh my fish](https://github.com/oh-my-fish/oh-my-fish)
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for my fish prompt. I googled "oh my powershell" and hoped I would get lucky
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with finding some nice batteries-included tools.
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[I got lucky](https://ohmyposh.dev/docs/installation/).
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After looking through the options I saw a theme named `sorin` that looks like
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this:
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### Project-local Dependencies
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To get this I'd need to do everything in WSL and use Nix. VSCode even has some
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nice integration that makes this easy. I wish there was a more native option
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though.
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## Things Windows Gets Really Right
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The big thing that Windows gets really right as a developer is backwards
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compatibility. For better or worse I can install just about any program from
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the last 30 years of released software targeting windows and it will Just Work.
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All of the games that I play natively target windows, and I don't have to hack
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at Steam's linux setup to get things like Sonic Adventure 2 working. All of the
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VR stuff I want to do will Just Work. All of the games I download will Just
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Work. I don't have to do the Proton rain dance. I don't have to play with GPU
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driver paths. I don't have to disable my compositor to get Factorio to launch.
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And most of all when I report a problem it's likely to actually be taken
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seriously instead of moaned at because I run a distribution without `/usr/lib`.
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---
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Overall, I think I can at least tolerate this development experience. It's not
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really the most ideal setup, but it does work and I can get things done with it.
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It makes me miss NixOS though. NixOS really does ruin your expectations of what
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a desktop operating system should be. It leaves you with kind of impossible
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standards, and it can be a bit hard to unlearn them.
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A lot of the software I use is closed source proprietary software. I've tried to
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fight that battle before. I've given up. When it works, Linux on the desktop is
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a fantastic experience. Everything works together there. The system is a lot
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more cohesive compared to the "download random programs and hope for the best"
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strategy that you end up taking with Windows systems. It's hard to do the
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"download random programs and hope for the best" strategy with Linux on the
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desktop because there really isn't one Linux platform to target. There's 20 or
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something. This is an advantage sometimes, but is a huge pain other times.
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The conclusion here is that there is no conclusion.
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@ -9,15 +9,14 @@ fn main() -> Result<()> {
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.output()
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.unwrap();
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if std::env::var("out").is_err() {
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println!("cargo:rustc-env=out=/yolo");
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}
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let out = std::env::var("out").unwrap_or("/fake".into());
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println!("cargo:rustc-env=out={}", out);
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let git_hash = String::from_utf8(output.stdout).unwrap();
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println!(
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"cargo:rustc-env=GITHUB_SHA={}",
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if git_hash.as_str() == "" {
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env!("out").into()
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out.into()
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} else {
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git_hash
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}
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