Make on Windows link not working

[drivendata]

Make on Windows link not working

[NapsterInBlue]

Hello from a year later! lol

Any idea what this link was supposed to be?

[pjbull]

Hm, not sure, but there are a fair number of options now.

I'm not on Windows, so would appreciate testing/recommendations/PR. I think the main options are:

• Windows Subsystem for Linux
• Cygwin
• MinGW

That said, I'm not sure that I'd recommend any of those options where you expect a lot of Windows developers. Either a batch script, powershell, or a Python-based DAG runner (snakemake, luigi, airflow) is probably less headache.

[NapsterInBlue]

Hey, thanks for such a quick response!

Trying to figure out/proliferate Python best practices at my org of mostly Windows users. I'm currently using Git bash from the Git for Windows suite (which uses MinGW internally) and then, regrettably, steering folks here if they want to add make.

So emphasis on "headache" in your last sentence, haha

I'll give cygwin a shot today, though. Thanks again!

[pjbull]

We've been thinking about experimenting with snakemake, which is Python-based so should run without additional installation pain. Would be very curious to look at your snakemake file for inspiration if you go that way!

[NapsterInBlue]

Hey again.

So cygwin comes even barer than Git Bash, out of the box. You can, however, specify all kinds of packages at the time of install, including make. Problem here, though, is the size of that scrollbar.

So unless you know what you're looking for, it's pretty intimidating.

Couple solutions here:

• You can always rerun the setup-XXX.exe to upgrade/add any packages you find out later that you want, which seems pretty painless.
• It's possible to just script away your entire setup with a .bat file, once you figure out what works for you.

But it'd probably take awhile to figure needle/haystack all of the good stuff from everything that's available. What I've got now will suffice, I think.

[NapsterInBlue]

And looking at snakemake, I like the idea, but unless it can natively run my existing makefiles, it feels a bit like this.

[wolfhoundjesse]

@NapsterInBlue What if you were to choco install make --source=cygwin and avoid the huge list? Having a fifteenth package manager on my machine doesn't feel great.