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Cross-Platform Development Guide

Although WinHome is an "Infrastructure-as-Code tool for Windows," it is built using modern .NET 10, allowing developers on Linux and macOS to contribute to the project effectively.

💻 Developing on Linux & macOS

1. Prerequisites

  • .NET 10 SDK: Required for building and running unit tests.
  • VS Code: With the C# Dev Kit extension.

2. Building the Project

You can compile the solution normally on any platform:

dotnet build WinHome.sln

3. Running Unit Tests

Our unit tests are designed with abstractions and mocks. This means you can run the logic-heavy unit tests (like config parsing, state management logic, and plugin discovery) without being on Windows:

dotnet test tests/WinHome.Tests/WinHome.Tests.csproj

⚠️ Platform Limitations

WinHome is a Windows-native engine. While the code compiles on other OSs, the core reconciliation logic (Engine.cs) contains platform guards:

  • Registry/Services/WSL: These modules will be skipped or throw errors if run natively on Linux/macOS.
  • Dry-Run: You can run dotnet run -- --dry-run to test configuration parsing and plugin loading, but many modules will log "Skipping: Platform not supported."

🧪 Testing Windows Logic from Linux/macOS

If you are modifying Windows-specific logic (e.g., the Registry Service) and need to verify it:

1. Automated CI (Recommended)

Push your branch to your fork. Our GitHub Actions CI (test.yaml) runs on windows-latest VMs. It will execute the full suite, including E2E tests, on a real Windows environment.

2. Remote Development

Use the VS Code Remote - SSH extension to connect to a Windows machine or VM and develop/debug directly in that environment.

3. Windows Containers / VM

If you have a local Windows machine, you can use the scripts in test-data/ to run acceptance tests inside a clean Windows Sandbox.