3 ms·

Do you know why they abandoned it? Or why they started it?

antirez 8y ago
They started the port after seeing I had no interest in writing a port for Windows. They stopped it IMHO when they realized, basically, the same things that prevented me from starting the project at all, that is: it runs very well on Linux and is very hard to port to Windows in a serious way, because of Windows lack of fork(). If you ask me Windows should absolutely get a serios POSIX layer ASAP and just let the Windows users use all the OSS that is out there.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  Which is what the Windows Subsystem for Linux does. If I recall correctly, Azure uses some combination of Windows Docker container and WSL support now to run Redis on Windows. Though from what I heard (as scuttlebutt/rumor/lay person reading the tea leaves), that isn't why they abandoned the port (as native ports are still handy for performance, and encouraged by Microsoft as much as they can), I heard it had more to do with the usual OSS reason of abandoning a port: not enough upstream support/enthusiasm for merging necessary, underlying patches, and not enough time/energy to devote to keeping a fork up-to-date with a wildly diverging upstream in such a situation. (Compare Git for Windows or Node for Windows, which have been officially recognized upstream, and directly merge a lot of patches upstream from Microsoft's contributions.) I don't have a dog in the fight and think you (antirez) are doing a good job, and Microsoft independently are doing a good job with OSS the last few years, and while I'm disappointed there wasn't more Reese's Cup peanut-butter-and-chocolate collaboration here between y'all, I'm okay eating my peanut butter and chocolate separately. That's OSS, in all its bazaar beauty.
  - antirez 8y ago
    The Windows Subsystem AFAIK is not meant to run things for production, but I'm not a windows expert indeed. About the abandoned port, yep we are saying the same thing in different terms probably: the reason why merging from upstream was so hard was probably because the windows port, for lack of POSIX interface, had to reinvent the persistence of Redis in user-space terms. That was why it was so hard to keep the patch in sync AFAIK.
    - WorldMaker 8y ago
      IIRC, WSL hit "general availability" status in a recent release, including on servers, but I believe that yes the guidance is still that WSL is primarily "for developers" and that running production services on it is, in one of the greatest OSS traditions, "at one's own risk", but "allowed" now in a "at least it won't break your warranty" sort of way.

They started the port after seeing I had no interest in writing a port for Windows. They stopped it IMHO when they realized, basically, the same things that prevented me from starting the project at all, that is: it runs very well on Linux and is very hard to port to Windows in a serious way, because of Windows lack of fork(). If you ask me Windows should absolutely get a serios POSIX layer ASAP and just let the Windows users use all the OSS that is out there.

WorldMaker 8y ago
Which is what the Windows Subsystem for Linux does. If I recall correctly, Azure uses some combination of Windows Docker container and WSL support now to run Redis on Windows. Though from what I heard (as scuttlebutt/rumor/lay person reading the tea leaves), that isn't why they abandoned the port (as native ports are still handy for performance, and encouraged by Microsoft as much as they can), I heard it had more to do with the usual OSS reason of abandoning a port: not enough upstream support/enthusiasm for merging necessary, underlying patches, and not enough time/energy to devote to keeping a fork up-to-date with a wildly diverging upstream in such a situation. (Compare Git for Windows or Node for Windows, which have been officially recognized upstream, and directly merge a lot of patches upstream from Microsoft's contributions.) I don't have a dog in the fight and think you (antirez) are doing a good job, and Microsoft independently are doing a good job with OSS the last few years, and while I'm disappointed there wasn't more Reese's Cup peanut-butter-and-chocolate collaboration here between y'all, I'm okay eating my peanut butter and chocolate separately. That's OSS, in all its bazaar beauty.
- antirez 8y ago
  The Windows Subsystem AFAIK is not meant to run things for production, but I'm not a windows expert indeed. About the abandoned port, yep we are saying the same thing in different terms probably: the reason why merging from upstream was so hard was probably because the windows port, for lack of POSIX interface, had to reinvent the persistence of Redis in user-space terms. That was why it was so hard to keep the patch in sync AFAIK.
  - WorldMaker 8y ago
    IIRC, WSL hit "general availability" status in a recent release, including on servers, but I believe that yes the guidance is still that WSL is primarily "for developers" and that running production services on it is, in one of the greatest OSS traditions, "at one's own risk", but "allowed" now in a "at least it won't break your warranty" sort of way.