Cannot build on Windows using GNUMake

[blueelvis]

The exact command to reproduce the issue: make windows

** Version of Make**:

PS D:\dev\minikube> make --version                                                                                                                            GNU Make 4.2.1
Built for Windows32
Copyright (C) 1988-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

The full output of the command that failed:

PS D:\dev\minikube> make windows The syntax of the command is incorrect.
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, pwd, ...) failed.
make: Makefile:59: pipe: Bad file descriptor
'command' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, uname -s, ...) failed.
make: Makefile:60: pipe: Bad file descriptor
Access denied - CMD
Access denied - PKG
File not found - -TYPE
File not found - F
File not found - -NAME
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
make: Nothing to be done for 'windows'.

The operating system version: Windows 10 Enterprise

PS D:\dev\minikube> $PSVersionTable                                                                                                                           
Name                           Value
----                           -----
PSVersion                      5.1.18362.145
PSEdition                      Desktop
PSCompatibleVersions           {1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...}
BuildVersion                   10.0.18362.145
CLRVersion                     4.0.30319.42000
WSManStackVersion              3.0
PSRemotingProtocolVersion      2.3
SerializationVersion           1.1.0.1

[afbjorklund]

Please use Docker, when building on Windows. Only Linux is supported as a build environment.

BUILD_IN_DOCKER=y make

[afbjorklund]

Theoretically it should be possible to build on Mac, or by using MSYS2/WSL when on Windows.

But it is not officially supported.

[afbjorklund]

Hmm, this might actually be a problem even before docker is started. Just guessing, haven't tried.
Since we are running shell commands from make, that probably don't work very well on Windows.

CMD_SOURCE_DIRS = cmd pkg

out/minikube-%: pkg/minikube/assets/assets.go pkg/minikube/translate/translations.go  $(shell find $(CMD_SOURCE_DIRS) -type f -name "*.go")
ifeq ($(MINIKUBE_BUILD_IN_DOCKER),y)
	$(call DOCKER,$(BUILD_IMAGE),/usr/bin/make $@)
else

Access denied - CMD
Access denied - PKG
File not found - -TYPE
File not found - F
File not found - -NAME
FIND: Parameter format not correct

So we might have to wrap that find hack in some variables, and only call if not building in docker.
Or we have to require a reasonable shell (also on Windows), even for just run the make command ?

Because this happens all over the place:

PYTHON := $(shell command -v python || echo "docker run --rm -it -v $(shell pwd):/minikube -w /minikube python python")

'command' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

BUILD_OS := $(shell uname -s)

process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, uname -s, ...) failed.

Fortunately, bash is rather easy to find...

• https://gitforwindows.org/

[afbjorklund]

ping @tstromberg

[afbjorklund]

I think we should just document that building minikube requires GNU bash and GNU make ?

• https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/

• https://www.gnu.org/software/make/

It should not be a problem on the other platforms, so it mostly affects any Windows developers.

https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/contributing/building/

Prerequisites

• A recent Go distribution (>=1.12)
• If you are on Windows, you’ll need Docker to be installed.
• 4GB of RAM

---

Wonder if building the out/minikube.exe itself works without Docker ? Can't see why it shouldn't.

Basically all it does is call go-bindata, gofmt and then go build. And some shell commands...

[tstromberg]

It isn't ideal, but in the short term, we may have to require running builds under bash for Windows with a handful of other prereqs. These should be documented.

FWIW, I would rather not run builds through Docker if I can avoid it.

[blueelvis]

Assigning this to myself. Let me see what can be if this can run directly from Bash for Windows.

/assign

[medyagh]

@blueelvis we could also update the documentation for contributing
to show how to build on windows
https://minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs/contributing/building/

[blueelvis]

@medyagh - Right now, I am using WSL on Windows 10 to do the compilation. I run tests and everything inside the WSL environment only.

Should we add that as well to the documentation?

[tstromberg]

make should work now. Is there something we need to do with the docs?

[blueelvis]

@tstromberg - I just tried on my machine and this is still an issue. I am not able to make because of the same issue. Reopening this.

[tstromberg]

@blueelvis - Do you mind sharing the result? I believe @sharifelgamal may have been using git-bash. Do you mind sharing the error message you are hitting?

[blueelvis]

@tstromberg - I think it is the same as above -

PS D:\dev\minikube> make
The syntax of the command is incorrect.
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, pwd, ...) failed.
make: Makefile:75: pipe: Bad file descriptor
'command' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, uname -s, ...) failed.
make: Makefile:76: pipe: Bad file descriptor
Access denied - CMD
Access denied - PKG
File not found - -TYPE
File not found - F
File not found - -NAME
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
FIND: Parameter format not correct
cp out/minikube-windows-amd64.exe out/minikube.exe
process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, cp out/minikube-windows-amd64.exe out/minikube.exe, ...) failed.
make (e=2): The system cannot find the file specified.
make: *** [Makefile:134: out/minikube.exe] Error 2

[afbjorklund]

This doesn't look like a bash shell.

What version of make is this ? Maybe it has some weird setting for the SHELL variable ?

Might have to add some basic sanity checking to the Makefile, perhaps even set the shell.

SHELL = /bin/sh

[sharifelgamal]

yeah make doesn't currently work in powershell, only in something that can run bash commands, and is documented as such.

[medyagh]

@sharifelgamal @blueelvis is there any update on this issue,
did we figure out what is our recommended way for building on windows ? so we could update the docs?

[sharifelgamal]

Yeah this is documented as needing a bash shell, we can close this.