Hi, can the Clojure core team please consider the proposal at https://ask.clojure.org/index.php/12288/proposal-to-deploy-clojuretools-to-the-powershell-gallery to deploy the clojure tools powershell module to the PowerShell Gallery repository. If it is proven to be correct, it will make the installation of the tools on any stock MS-Windows PC a trivial matter: Install-Module -Name ClojureTools to install, Update-Module ClojureTools to upgrade. Thanks

(Just to clarify, the above proposal is something that can be done in the short term and is not supposed to be in any way in contrast to @lee's suggestion to embrace deps.exe, if the PS scripts can be retired, so much the better)

I gently and humbly recommend not investing any more down the road of the powershell module strategy. To me it feels like a very good alpha experiment that gave some valuable feedback but does not seem like a good long term solution. All well and easy for me to make such proclamations, eh? It is just one person’s opinion, and shared with good intentions.

I'm reading more about how to create exe's, include things in windows package manager, and etc. still lots for me to learn in this area. Just an update

Hi @lee, I understand where you are coming from. From my personal perspective, Clojure should be within the same reach to the windows users as it is to users on other operating systems. I would even argue (this is a subjective opinion) that the windows user base may potential constitute a larger user base than linux or macos combined together. My reasoning is simple; big corporation are most likely to use windows PCs as the first point of contact for their employees rather than Linux. Thus it is essential to me that there is good windows support for Clojure if Clojure wants to get a good share of these getting started users. Currently, the current official (alpha) way to get started with Clojure is the PowerShell Clojure tools module. A new user has to start with these, all the examples on the net and getting started guides are around these tools. As it stands now, if they have to install deps.clj it is more likely to lead them to confusion (just on the simple fact it has to be invoked as deps.exe and not clojure or clj) and perhaps lead to unexpected results. For what it worth the PowerShell module can cause a lot of trouble in some edge cases but is the closest we have to get people started on Windows. Unless there is a definite path to move away from these alpha tools (as with the work that you are kindly undertaking), we still need to support them and get them at the same level of usability as the bash scripts. Hope this makes some sense :)

All good points! To be clear, I am just a happy user of deps.exe, not its author. And I’ve no real sway on the Clojure core team.

There used to be a .bat file - I'm not sure why the switch to Powershell was made. Perhaps maintainability? Then this would be a good argument to switch to deps.clj even more ;)

☝️ this dude is the the author

I think @chaos knows this since he (ikappaki on github) contributed recently

Ah, ikappaki! Hiya! Good on you for being a voice for Windows users.

There is only so much time in an open-source day and the Clojure core team has to decide where to invest their valuable time and brain cells. The last Clojure survey shows under 5% of folks on native Windows, so that might make it hard to justify investing here instead of other places. But who knows? It could be there aren’t a great number of Windows native users because the tooling isn’t great here yet, and the tooling isn’t great here yet because there are not a great number of Windows native users, to get circular on you. And now that there is WSL (5% of folks reported using Windows with WSL) that makes things a bit murkier too.

hehe it depends on which side of the argument you support 🙂 I would say 5% windows user base could as well suggest the clojure community has to do more to embrace windows users to use clojure. The windows user base is too large to ignore for the sake of clojure’s growth. If the core team is occupied with other relatively more important things, we are here as a community to put our free time forward to contribute in good faith according to the strict standards and guidelines they set. wrt WSL, it is an optional extension, people might be willing to look into this perhaps going out of their standard everyday use, but is not something that everyone will necessarily embrace in their daily life. It is too unixy for windows only users to ask to deal with.

I think I am after a high standard that clojure does not have to differentiate against users between linux, macos or windows. There should all get the same level of support from the language. Any incidental complexity we should be able to overcome.

That would be nice, yeah! But it all still takes the Clojure core team’s time to evaluate and understand alternatives and risks. And then time to support whatever solution is adopted. But your words are not for me, they are for to the Clojure core team!