Dumb question; how to install on Windows from the binary release?

[alshdavid]

I have the coreutils.exe, downloaded from the latest release.

I realize this is a multi-call binary so running .\coreutils.exe ls will run ls. Renaming or linking coreutils.exe as ls.exe will also work.

Right now I am running .\coreutils.exe to print out all the available commands:

pwsh>  .\coreutils.exe
coreutils 0.0.18 (multi-call binary)

Usage: coreutils [function [arguments...]]

Currently defined functions:

    [, arch, b2sum, b3sum, base32, base64, basename, basenc, cat, cksum, comm, cp, csplit, cut,
    date, dd, df, dir, dircolors, dirname, du, echo, env, expand, expr, factor, false, fmt,
    fold, hashsum, head, hostname, join, link, ln, ls, md5sum, mkdir, mktemp, more, mv, nl,
    nproc, numfmt, od, paste, pr, printenv, printf, ptx, pwd, readlink, realpath, relpath, rm,
    rmdir, seq, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha3-224sum, sha3-256sum, sha3-384sum, sha3-
    512sum, sha384sum, sha3sum, sha512sum, shake128sum, shake256sum, shred, shuf, sleep, sort,
    split, sum, sync, tac, tail, tee, test, touch, tr, true, truncate, tsort, uname, unexpand,
    uniq, unlink, vdir, wc, whoami, yes

I haven't found an elegant way to parse the currently defined functions so I copy the output of the .\coreutils.exe command and mannually add them to a powershell command that creates links

$utils = "arch", "b2sum", "b3sum", "base32", "base64", "basename", "basenc", "cat", "cksum", "comm", "cp", 
"csplit", "cut", "date", "dd", "df", "dir", "dircolors", "dirname", "du", "echo", "env", "expand", "expr", 
"factor", "false", "fmt", "fold", "hashsum", "head", "hostname", "join", "link", "ln", "ls", "md5sum", "mkdir", 
"mktemp", "more", "mv", "nl", "nproc", "numfmt", "od", "paste", "pr", "printenv", "printf", "ptx", "pwd", 
"readlink", "realpath", "relpath", "rm", "rmdir", "seq", "sha1sum", "sha224sum", "sha256sum", "sha3-224sum", 
"sha3-256sum", "sha3-384sum", "sha3-", "512sum", "sha384sum", "sha3sum", "sha512sum", "shake128sum", "shake256sum", 
"shred", "shuf", "sleep", "sort", "split", "sum", "sync", "tac", "tail", "tee", "test", "touch", "tr", "true", 
"truncate", "tsort", "uname", "unexpand", "uniq", "unlink", "vdir", "wc", "whoami", "yes"

Foreach ($util in $utils) { 
    $util_path = (-join(".\", $util, ".exe"))
    New-Item -ItemType SymbolicLink -Path $util_path -Target ".\coreutils.exe" 
}

Which gives me the utils as symlinks in a directory that I add to my $PATH variable

But I can't help but feel this isn't how we should be installing the utils. How do you do it? How are you supposed to do it?

[tertsdiepraam]

The symlinks and adding the directory sounds about right actually if you do it manually. Generally, we recommend using a package manager though. On Windows, you can use scoop for example, which should do all of that for you. At some point we had contributors working on packaging uutils for the Windows store as well, but I think that work has stalled for now.

[alshdavid]

I know it's blasphemy but I generally avoid package managers on Windows unless absolutely necessary.

I inevitably run into issues with permissions, install locations, config locations, WSL, how is it added to the PATH, is it installed to Program Files? Program Data? LocalRoaming? Documents? Or whatever the MS store does?

I've reverted to simply putting binaries into C:\Users\my-user\.local and adding them manually to my PATH.

It's embarrassing boring but there's no ambiguity about where something is, what configuration it has or how to uninstall it.

It's saved so many headaches

EDIT: same goes for MacOS to a lesser extent. I only use brew when I have to, otherwise I just put binaries in $HOME/.local

[tertsdiepraam]

Of course, it's your machine, so do whatever you want! Just make sure to keep things updated for security :)

[alshdavid]

Good point!