Windows Support

[rwilliams]

PTY is not available on Windows builds of ruby. Is something like this relevant to adding Windows support given how backticks currently utilizes PTY?

[xeger]

Backticks only uses the PTY module when using unbuffered mode. Unbuffered mode is the default, but if you construct your own Runner, then it's posible to ask for buffered operation, which utilizes IO.pipe instead of PTY. I think IO.pipe is supported under Win32 MRI, but I lack a Windows system to experiment on.

If you're willing to do some testing for me, I'll produce an experimental branch that "supports" Windows but which only performs buffered execution. You'll need to know how to use Bundler to point to the experimental branch, but that's straightforward. Interested?

[rwilliams]

I can test it for you.

[xeger]

Great. The branch is named no-pty and you can use it by putting this in your Gemfile:

gem 'backticks',
  git: 'https://github.com/xeger/backticks',
  branch: 'no-pty'

[rwilliams]

Awesome. I'll give it a spin this weekend.

[xeger]

Bump Any luck with the no-pty branch in Windows?

[rwilliams]

I haven't been able to rip out all the posix stuff in my gem yet to really thrash backticks yet but so far it looks good. Thanks for your quick patch on this.

[xeger]

I published backticks v1.0.1 with your fix; thanks for reporting + testing.