> No, wait. really ???
Dev should check out https://www.kylheku.com/cygnal
If you can compile this for Cygwin, you can deploy it as a native Windows application with Cygnal's fork of cygwin1.dll (plus other needed DLL's from Cygwin).
Console support is fine; even programs that use termios and ANSI codes directly work in a Windows console (like out of cmd.exe).
That was one of the primary motivations for Cygnal; I wanted a decent quality Windows port of a programming language with a well-developed REPL: something someone could just install from a regular installer, and then run out of cmd.exe with the same interactive experience as on Unixes.
I jest of course. This is really cool and nice to see something like this, make the front page of HN for once!
Trade offs, as usual.
And having "build cruft" is a feature for most non web devs. It would be trivial to set up a separate repo with all the build tools and configuration, but we want it nearby.
There's no tradeoffs here, IMO.
Genuine question: what development toolchain lets you make a repo _doesn't_ have a bunch of files for the build process? GP specifically mentioned JavaScript, which I feel has an above-average amount of tooling in projects due to preprocessing the code in various ways being super common.
The number of times I redo the same thing in a repl or with weird scripts saved in /tmp or ~/ is kind of nuts....but generalizing them into something like this takes tons of work. Kudos!
It sure does. I was really impressed when I saw the level of polish in the README. Mad props!
Okay, you're pretty much asking for the wrath of God here. Bonus points if you can compile it down to 666 KB.