Add troubleshooting section for PEX on Windows and EXE

[stan-dot]

Describe potential issues when shipping for Windows

[jsirois]

@stan-dot Pex doesn't support Windows at all yet (except by luck or when run under WSL): pex-tool/pex#2639. Neither does Pants (except when run under WSL; in other words, when run on Linux): https://www.pantsbuild.org/stable/docs/getting-started/prerequisites#microsoft-windows.

If you want Windows support out of Pants or Pex you are out of luck.

[stan-dot]

yeah I only realized hours after I made this ticket. I think it'd be good for Pants to include 'DOES NOT SUPPORT WINDOWS' in the FAQ section or 'is this suitable for my project' to allow for faster elimination if does not fit the use case

[sureshjoshi]

It's in the prerequisites (the Pants part, specifically):
https://www.pantsbuild.org/stable/docs/getting-started/prerequisites

[sureshjoshi]

I don’t appear to be able to move this to the pantsbuild.org, but I’m working on slowly updating the docs.

Part of that will be splitting up users of Pants, from developers of Pants. I think in the Users section, it might be worth a section for building artifacts for various platforms. A non-exhaustive list, but for example, I can build a Node app that works cross-platform using Pants. Ditto JVM stuff.

It’s specifically Python/Pex, bash, NFPM, and a few other backends where the produced artifacts are limited by OS (currently).

[jsirois]

And... the engine, right? IIUC exactly 1 crate is tested on Windows.

[sureshjoshi]

And... the engine, right? IIUC exactly 1 crate is tested on Windows.

I guess, but I don't think users of Pants are producing the Pants engine as an artifact to distribute to others, whereas I use the JS backend and some custom plugins to distribute executables to people.

[jsirois]

Sure, but this does affect any native artifact unless the tool chain Pants uses to produce that artifact can cross compile.

I just bring this up because Pants has a clear path to get the engine running on Windows and, besides porting 1 crate, it has consistently ignored doing this work.