Windows Support

[dussab]

Package ToolHive for Windows

[dmjb]

The container images we are using are all Linux containers. It's also not clear to me that any of the MCP servers out there are tested in a native Windows environment. That means that in order to run them under Windows, you need WSL enabled with Docker installed and configured. Assuming a user has such a setup, then they can run ToolHive inside WSL and the deployment/packaging story is the same as for Linux.

In principle, you could have a Windows binary that runs in a Powershell/CMD shell but manages containers running inside Docker/WSL, but it's not clear if this provides enough benefit for end users to justify the extra testing/portability on our side.

[danbarr]

FWIW, Docker Desktop on Windows defaults to the WSL 2 backend (or uses Hyper-V) and has no problem with Linux containers.

But I attempted to build ToolHive on my Windows laptop, but go build .\cmd\thv failed with:

# github.com/StacklokLabs/toolhive/cmd/thv/app
cmd\thv\app\run_common.go:172:3: unknown field Setsid in struct literal of type syscall.SysProcAttr

[dmjb]

@danbarr I assume it will build inside WSL2?

I think it's an open question of whether people want native Windows containers (and not Linux containers running inside WSL2)

[danbarr]

Yes, the CLI does build under WSL2, and it can launch containers into the Docker Desktop instance (it's "shared" - docker commands can be run from both Windows and WSL2 and end up running in the same runtime). And the launched MCPs are accessible from the Windows "side" (I tested with Roo Code running in VS Code for Windows).

But users doing it this way can't benefit from client auto-configuration, I had to add the MCP server manually.

I think the expectation as a Windows user would be that I could run the thv CLI from Windows and have it be able to configure my clients. I wouldn't have any expectation of using Windows containers - nothing does, TBH.

[Spenhouet]

The current release contains a Windows binary. I installed that (put the binary on the path) and the CLI tool is available but when I execute thv list, I get

Error: failed to create container manager: no supported container runtime available: container runtime not found

While the same command executed in WSL gives (as expected):

No MCP servers found

Does that mean that the Windows support is not yet working? Or did I do something wrong?

[danbarr]

Hi @Spenhouet! You didn't do anything wrong, while the ToolHive CLI does currently build on Windows, ToolHive does not yet work natively.

For now, you can run ToolHive in WSL, taking advantage of Docker Desktop's ability to manage containers from either "side", but you'll have to manually configure your Windows-native MCP clients.

[Spenhouet]

Got it, thanks for the clarification. If I understand correctly, native Windows support is planned but not there yet. Looking forward to that. Thanks for the update!
I was looking into shipping toolhive binaries with a MCP-client for any easy out-of-the box experience. Users then only need to have a Docker env running (somewhere on any OS). No other dependencies needed.