UX hurdels on Windows

[schulzch]

The purpose of this ticket is to describe some user experience hurdles on windows for a first time user.

Preconditions: I had CMake 3.2 and Visual Studio 2013 installed.

• Download bii-win_3_0.exe
• Install, select "Add to system's path" (less problems with continuous integration service; no idea why one would recommend current user...), uncheck "View ReadMe" (online docs are open anyway...)
• Press Windows+R, type cmd, press Enter
• Follow Getting Started

Problems:

• bii setup:cpp does not detect Visual Studio
• bii build does not automatically fall back to NMake/Visual Studio if MinGW isn't installed

I suggest to use Visual C++ as default on Windows, as its part of the Windows SDK, which is "free" and superior to MinGW in many aspects (compatibility, 64bit, Microsoft language extensions, ...)

As for configuration: I think it'll be nice to have an interactive list to choose from, e.g.:

Choose one of the following generators:
  1. NMake
  2. Visual Studio 2013
  3. Visual Studio 2015
  4. Sublime Text
<If generator does not support multiple targets>
Choose one of the following targets:
  1. Windows 32bit
  2. Windows 64bit
  3. Emscripten
  4. Android
<IDE opens>

Thanks for making such a great tool. Keep up the good work! 👍

[drodri]

no idea why one would recommend current user

It was requested by users, didnt want to add stuff to their path. For most users, it is ok to add things to the path, but if someone wants it the other way and we can handle, we do it :)

I suggest to use Visual C++ as default on Windows

Yes, I suggest that too! It has been a long requested (even ourselves) features, so lets add it to our issues:

• Use Visual Studio as default generator in Windows biicode#21

bii setup:cpp does not detect Visual Studio

Yes, that is true. In fact, bii setup:cpp was an auxiliary helper intended for novice C++ people, students, organizing workshops, etc. As long as you have CMake>3.0 available and one VS, everything is ok, no need to run it at all. Probably we will deprecate it at some point, but by now it is handy (e.g. I sometimes use it in travis-ci)

As for configuration: I think it'll be nice to have an interactive list

I agreed (past tense) with you, and former versions of biicode were very interactive for such things. But then it happened that a vast majority of users largely preferred command line options than interactive commands. We keeped both for a while, but at the end was a nightmare to develop and maintain (testing interactive commands in multi-platform is a pain) and we finally dropped interactivity. For seeing available generators you can just run:

$ cmake --help

As we use the generators as defined by CMake (also there are generators for 64 bits or ARM architectures in some Visual), they are not really separate targets. As for the targets (like Emscripten or Android), our current approach is user extensibility, but it is hard to offer them as options. Check for example: https://www.biicode.com/diego/rpiwin, that install a xxx_toolchain.cmake in your project, and that can be loaded with "bii configure -t xxx". But we still have not integrated xxx inside biicode, and I doubt that it should be done, as it makes more complex for toolchains to quickly evolve and adapt particular user needs. I have largely wanted to have an Emscripten toolchain for biicode, hopefully someone contributes one the same way as the RPI-win above one.

Thanks for making such a great tool. Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much! And thanks very much for your feedback. Best.