Assess and document Windows OS compatibility

[d33bs]

CytoTable currently is tested against Linux and MacOS environments. This issue highlights a need to assess and document Windows OS compatibility as a proactive step towards user support.

Possibly related / involved: Parsl/parsl#1878

[d33bs]

It's possible WSL1 or 2 may be required to run CytoTable within Windows environments. To this effect, GitHub Actions may need special considerations. See the following links for more information:

• Add WSL2 to the Windows 2022 image actions/runner-images#5920
• https://github.com/Vampire/setup-wsl

[kenibrewer]

Have we already had requests for native Windows support? I'm a Windows user, but long before I started using devcontainers for everything I only ever ran code/cli tools in WSL. That meant I was always looking at the Linux/Ubuntu documentation section for tools anyways.

I've done some work on Github Actions in a repo that supports windows natively and ut was a pretty big headache. The testing matrix was very complicated and there were multiple versions of jobs that were required for the different platforms.

[d33bs]

Thanks @kenibrewer ! It does seem like this might be a challenge on multiple fronts. I raised this issue in anticipation of users coming from Windows as part of investigating IN Carta for #136 . Reading through the documentation found here it seems that IN Carta is a Windows-only software, meaning that there's likely a chance we will need to support Windows somehow (even if through WSL). I'm under the assumption that Parsl/parsl#1878 could take time to address and WSL1 or 2 (as opposed to native Windows) would be advisable to any Windows users of CytoTable. I feel that WSL, like MacOS, is different enough from Debian Linux to warrant a distinct test for observing behaviors.

This issue I think could be addressed with:

• a specialized test for Windows over WSL1 (because WSL2 is not yet supported on the default GitHub Actions images)
• documentation on installing / using WSL with CytoTable

Doing these could help us prepare for IN Carta users through prior awareness of technical issues and a focus on documentation (guidance on WSL usage if the users are not yet aware, etc). All that said, there are some possible "unknowns" here (deeper than the Parsl fork error we face now on Windows).