Is it just me or is Plone very slow to launch on Windows?

Plone Support
1

I've managed to get Plone up and running on Windows:

Approach:

Install Scoop (it's like homebrew/apt-get for windows)

In powershell (not cmd) I run the following:

iex (new-object net.webclient).downloadstring('https://get.scoop.sh')
scoop install 7zip coreutils curl git grep openssh sed wget vim grep git-with-openssh rsync

Then, just for vanity, I change the powershell theme

scoop install concfg
concfg import solarized small
scoop install pshazz

To use Python2.7 I need to add a new repository (they call a repo a bucket)

scoop bucket add versions
scoop install python27

After that I install Plone.

Known issues

There is a collection of tools called gow (I think that stands for gnu on windows), this ships with a putty based version ssh (you DON'T WANT that, you definitely want git-with-openssh), the ssh provided by gow irequires the use of special putty ppk keys. You'll need to generate your special ppk using puttygen, lots of not fun steps. This also affects things like rsync which I still haven't gotten to work reliably.

If you insist on using putty's ssh then you'll need to become familiar with pageant, which you can run in a separate shell window.

pageant .ssh/my.ppk

Once pageant is running you can ssh into sites against the putty ppk key.

If you get error:
ImportError: No module named pywintypes
Install pypiwin32
Run:

pip install pypiwin32

That's all for now.
When I did finally got Plone built it took forever to start.

Next I'm going to explore Steve McMahon's approach, using Microsoft's visual C++ compiler for Python 2.7
https://www.stevemcmahon.com/steves-blog/building-plone-on-windows-10

2

Update:
As Steven McMahon has pointed out in his blog post related to Plone on Windows 10, use MS Visual C++ compiler for Python 2.7
when compiling. I found that the resulting setup ran 10 times faster (or at least felt that way).

What I don't know at the moment is how to specify which compiler gets used for Python on Windows. The easy solution was to make sure only the MS Visual C++ compiler was installed.

3

Your plan is to host on windows or to develop for Plone in Windows? If bash on windows becomes stable, should we recommend it's use?

4

I run Plone on Windows Bash. Its startup is indeed slow mainly because of filesystem performance issues that are expected to be solved in a few months. Still I very much prefer it over Cygwin or even the Vagrant option which is very good too.

As a sidenote I create my buildout cache's eggs folder (~/.buildout/eggs/ as per ~/.buildout/default.cg) as a symlink to a folder outside the Linux Virtual Filesystem (VolFs), something like /mnt/c/Users/Davi/Projects/plone/eggs. This is to make files editable in Windows as there is also a bug regarding saving files hosted in Linux space: they sometimes disappear (not without leaving some kind of invisible file and afaik forcing you to delete the whole directory).

Interesting reads:

5

This is for development not hosting. There are some that I work with who are still invested in Windows. I want to make sure that there is a viable path for development on Windows, deployment will still be going to *nix servers.

I've started to think that it should feel more familiar to Windows devs. Windows devs don't use the commandline much. That's why things like XAMPP exist. Replacing apt-get is something a *nix dev, like me, may want. I suspect that a Windows dev may not be as interested in such as thing. Similarly, I wonder if bash on Windows is something that "real" Windows devs are clamouring for.

6

I love Bash on Windows, that gives me a chance to work with those who work only in the Windows environment. For example, the designer might easily live test his UI works.