Why Rethinkdb don't have binary for windows?

Question

I am interested in Rethinkdb and would like to develop/test on it, but main problem is: it don't have package for windows operating system. I tried to compile from source code, that was also not possible as there was no any instruction.

What makes it so difficult to make executable for windows? Is there any alternative way to install Rethinkdb in windows OS? even very small and not that famous application has windows binary but not Rethinkdb. It is quite surprise for me. Another surprising is there are many community executable for other OS but not windows.

Thank you for understanding and waiting for good answer.

Answer 1

Rethinkdb just announced that it started development for Windows. Please follow

[1] https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/issues/1100

[2] https://twitter.com/segphault/status/590633792781611009

Update: RethinkDB announced in Windows :

[3] https://rethinkdb.com/docs/install/windows/

Answer 2

Cross-platform development isn't that easy. RethinkDB uses some features under the covers which makes porting it to Windows a difficult job, f.e. a Unix toolchain for the builds and Unix syscalls. For more information on that have a look at this GitHub issue. It states that Windows support is planned, but with low priority.

As a quick fix, you could RethinkDB run in a virtual machine or in Microsoft Azure. For the second one, I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago.

Answer 3

RethinkDB has already started development for Windows. While it's not released yet, this is how you can run it through Vagrant. See: https://github.com/gearz-lab/rethinkdb-vagrant

I'm using Chocolatey, feel free to skip steps if they don't apply.

Installing Chocolatey

Open Powershell as an administrator and run this command:

iex ((new-object net.webclient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

... now you should have Chocolatey installed. We're gonna use to install the others.

Installing Vagrant

Run this as an administrator:

choco install vagrant -y

Installing VirtualBox

Vagrant relies on a virtualization application that it calls a "provider". The default one is VirtualBox so let's install it. Run cmd as administrator and run this:

choco install virtualbox -y

Now you should be able to run the vboxmanage command. If it doesn't work, make sure C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox is in your PATH.

Installing Cygwin

We're gonna log on a virtual machine using SSH, so we need a SSH enabled terminal. For that, let's use Cygwin.

choco install cyg-get -y

Installing Cygwin packages

There'are two Cygwin packages we need to install, openssh, because Cygwin doesn't have SSH support by default, and rsync so Vagrant can use it to synchronize files between the host and the guest machines.

On PowerShell, running as an administrator, let's run these commands:

cyg-get openssh
cyg-get rsync

Cloning rethinkdb-vagrant

Open the Cygwin64 Terminal. You should now be in your Cygwin home folder, which should look like C:\tools\cygwin\home\[YOUR_USER].

Make sure you have git installed. If you don't just choco install git -y. Now, clone rethyinkdb-vagrant:

git clone https://github.com/gearz-lab/rethinkdb-vagrant.git

Now you should have a directory like this: C:\tools\cygwin\home\[YOUR_USER]\rethinkdb-vagrant.

Starting Vagrant and useful commands

From inside the Cygwin64 Terminal home directory (described in the last step), type cd rethinkdb-vagrant, now, any Vagrant commands will target cd rethinkdb-vagrant.

• To setup and boot the machine: vagrant up (After this, RethinkDB is available, see next step).
• To access the machine's terminal: vagrant ssh.
• To destroy the machine (every RethinkDB data will be lost): vagrant destroy.
• To suspend the machine: vagrant suspend.
• To resume a suspended machine: vagrant resume.

Accessing RethinkDB.

Make sure you have vagrant up from the last step. Now:

• For accessing the web administration tool: http://localhost:8080.
• For accessing RethinkDB from a client app, the port is 28015.