Help requested on the windows side

[hmaarrfk]

Comment:

Of the 4 in the @conda-forge/miniforge team, I don't really know if anybody is actively using windows as their main machine. I'm wondering if anybody else in @conda-forge/core or other very active members in conda-forge are willing to join and help support our windows users.

I've been trying to sort the issues on linux/osx/windows basis.
https:/conda-forge/miniforge/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3Awindows
but generally we do suffer from "less than ideal" integration with windows which I can only attribute to the fact that we aren't using it very much ourselves.

It also doesn't escape me that that setting up a windows machine is somewhat painful, so it is difficult to test the installation + uninstallation process. In either case, this is my ask for a volunteer that might want to champion the windows side of the integration and help think along those lines.

[ocefpaf]

I read some of those, to see if I could help, but while most of my day-job colleagues do use Windows, I could not find a single issue that I knew how to solve :-/

I did find many "my company requests X" or "My corporation does things Y", etc. Many forced workflows that could be resolved if those making $ of miniforge would inject some of that here to pay a Windows dev.

[wolfv]

This might not be a super helpful comment, but we do take good care of pixi Windows support and we could also advertise e.g. pixi or micromamba as alternative installation methods for conda and conda-forge packages more :)

[hmaarrfk]

I did find many "my company requests X" or "My corporation does things Y", etc. Many forced workflows that could be resolved if those making $ of miniforge would inject some of that here to pay a Windows dev.

@ocefpaf I agree.

@wolfv i was going to open an other issue about strategies we can use to keep miniforge competitive. Listening to your pixi interview/podcast was encouraging on the pixi front.

[hmaarrfk]

@ocefpaf do you want to be added as a member of this team? You've been doing a HUGE amount of work toward making this experience better. (I know this doesn't resolve the windows issue i originally opened).

[ocefpaf]

I'm not sure I've been doing anything useful but sure. I'll try to be more proactive here and see if I can investigate some of those issues further.

[hmaarrfk]

I'm embarrassed. I think I confused your silhouette with @jaimergp's. I need to get off the computer screen.

[ocefpaf]

Yes, Jaime is definitely the right person for this team ;-p

[jaimergp]

Hey! I'm flattered but I'm afraid I can't commit consistent attention to this repo (beyond what concerns a core member, that is). I'm happy to help when things hit the constructor stack and I'm usually watching for reports that need to be fixed in the tooling. I've also forwarded some threads to @marcoesters here and there to see if the team at Anaconda had seen similar things in their own reports. I'll continue to do so even if I'm not technically part of the Miniforge team, if that's ok. How does that sound?

[hmaarrfk]

i mean, i just wanted to know that I say something like

Unfortunately, the underlying challenge on windows is that we don't have somebody on the team that uses windows on a daily basis to really help explore in depth the good proposals that are being put forward here.

I wasn't going to be lying.

This "request for help" will likely stay open for a while until a champion comes forward!

[jezdez]

I'm interested in supporting this search, while also recognizing that I'm not a Windows expert. It's worth finding and funding experts for this platform given the outsized importance to the ecosystem, though. I agree that @marcoesters has been instrumental to resolving Anaconda-specific issues related to Windows.

To facilitate the work, I think it's worth putting some effort behind the community installer team, to find long-term sustainable solutions to these problems.

[hmaarrfk]

PS. if you have come to this thread, take a second to vote on #598 we are currently "tied" (one community member voted in the core section I think. I'll tease out the votes soon).

[wolfv]

@hmaarfk did you already open a ticket with regards to pixi or micromamba? In my own biased opinion, miniconda and miniforge are not the best ways to consume conda packages anymore - i think it could be cool to add a note to some documentation that mentions the alternative tools.

[hmaarrfk]

sorry took a little longer to put my little thoughts together #602

Honestly, I feel like i've been "ignoring" the windows users for too long and I didn't want "future unix tools" to take precedence over windows concerns.

[marcoesters]

Hi all, I can definitely speak to the pain of debugging installer/uninstaller issues on Windows. In general, the biggest issue I encountered is even reproducing the bug on Windows. It isn't necessarily the installer that's causing the problem either, so teasing that out isn't always easy.

I will take a look at new issues here and there to help where I can. For existing issues, prioritization would help a lot - feel free to contact me directly to take a look at specific issues. I will be on PTO for most of July though, just FYI.

[jakirkham]

Maybe improving data collection from users would help as well. Wrote up issue ( #620 ) discussing this possibility

[hmaarrfk]

@vipcxj please open a new issue