Windows cmd.exe and Powershell support

[paritosh149]

How can this be run on Windows cmd.exe and Powershell?

[SeanHayes]

I'm not sure, it'll likely require changes to run in a Windows env. From what I've read, cmd.exe may not support ANSI escape codes before Windows 10, and in Windows 10 you may need to configure ANSI support yourself.

[paritosh149]

Ok. But Powershell does support ANSI escape codes. Check https://github.com/PoshCode/Pansies.

[SeanHayes]

Ok. Have you tried installing or using on Windows? What errors did you get?

[paritosh149]

Please specify the steps to install the dependencies on Windows.

[Bgumel]

According to the code dependencies are installed by setup.py
clone the repository cmd or powershell with :
git clone https://github.com/google/gif-for-cli.git

Change directory to gif-for-cli :
cd gif-for-cli

Then install the dependencies using setup.py:
python setup.py install

[GarethWright]

If you do that you'll end up with:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "setup.py", line 33, in os.symlink('../third_party', symlink_path) AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'symlink'

[SeanHayes]

Due to some peculiarities with the way Python packing works, the install script has to temporarily create a symbolic link to that dir. It'll probably have to change for Windows.

If you guys want to work on a PR for Windows support it would be much appreciated. :)

[paritosh149]

Why is a symbolic link needed for third party dependencies at all. Can't it just be packaged as a single folder?

[SeanHayes]

I needed to include a font for the export feature, and it's Google policy to put all 3rd party code in the third_party dir. I tried a number of different ways, but I couldn't get that directory to consistently be included in the .whl and .tar.gz distributions. The best way to ensure the needed files would be available after install was to make it a Python module, but I didn't want third_party to be a top level module name, as it's too generic, I wanted it to be gif_for_cli.third_party. After several failed attempts to map the third_party dir to that module name, it seemed the easiest/only way was to just add a temporary symlink.

[GarethWright]

Seems a bit daft but I guess you could add Windows support for symlink...though that would require an elevated command prompt to install.

if os.name == "nt": def symlink_ms(source, link_name): import ctypes csl = ctypes.windll.kernel32.CreateSymbolicLinkW csl.argtypes = (ctypes.c_wchar_p, ctypes.c_wchar_p, ctypes.c_uint32) csl.restype = ctypes.c_ubyte flags = 1 if os.path.isdir(source) else 0 try: if csl(link_name, source.replace('/', '\\'), flags) == 0: raise ctypes.WinError() except: pass os.symlink = symlink_ms

[paritosh149]

As per Windows 10 Creators Update, elevated command prompt is not mandatory anymore to create symlinks. Refer, this.

[cybort]

Linux subsystem on Windows works with this at present.Type bash in cmd.exe (yeah it's still in cmd.exe) and deploy it like Linux.