Unix-tools-for-windows

This document outlines our plan for supporting Unix tools on windows.

Why not write our own tools?

Several of these tools be a significant challenge to recreate, such as diff. Others such as grep or sed, could be recreated but our version would slower, less stable, and overall worse.

The motivation for using Unix tools is to take advantage of robust software, which is well maintained, familiar, and already included on the user's OS (except that windows thing).

GnuWin

GnuWin provides standalone version of all the tools we need. The only issue is that the project seems very old, and the tools have not been updated for a while. They appear to be about 10 years behind current builds.

However, these tools are very mature, and they perform exactly as described.

Git

Most users of our software will also require Git for Windows. Along with git this installation includes a bunch of gnu tools including the ones we need.

At installation time inform the user about the compatibility with Git for windows. In the preferences for panel include a button called "Find Git". This button will open a file dialog which allows the user to locate their Git installation. Once selected, Cryptofex will reference the GNU tools there.

Busybox

Busybox would be ideal, but unfortunately it is not supported on windows. A few community efforts seem to have been made in this area, but Justin could not get any of them to compile.