Osmium: Is there a compiled .exe for Windows available?

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Is there a compiled .exe for Osmium Tool Windows available?

I want to use the Osmium command line tool in windows but there doesn’t appear to be any compiled binaries.

I considered having a go at compiling it myself, but not only would I need to set up a compiler, but ten libraries in addition. From experience, I’m certain I’d be pulling my hair out on attempting to get all those to work synchronously.

I found something called ‘conda’, but I’ve no idea what to do with it.
https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/osmium-tool/files

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Do the Ubuntu ones work under WSL?

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Ubuntu isn’t windows. Doesn’t it still require compiling for Linux? That would make it just another hoop to jump through.

I’m unsure why developers are unwilling to compile their own code. Wouldn’t they be the best qualified to obtain the optimum output? Would compiling for the 3 OSs mentioned on the Github page be a large percentage of time compared with writing the code? It would mean a /lot/ more users being able to take advantage of the software.

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DaveF: Because the developers have something better to do than supporting their software for free on a proprietary operating system that they don’t use themselves and so have no way to actually compile and test on. It is actually a huge amount of work to keep a project running on several versions of several operating systems, package it and deal with the users need for support. That’s why “the developers” don’t do this. We don’t provide packaged software for any other operating system either. Fortunately for Linux there are several distributions where other volunteers compile current versions of Osmium and package them.

I could ask the opposite than what you are asking: Aren’t there millions of Windows developers out there who know how to build and support software on Windows. Why isn’t there a single one of them willing to chip in and support Osmium on Windows now that most of the work of actually developing the software has already been done? Why does that only work for Linux and not for Windows?

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No, but a version of it does run on certain versions of Windows. I’ve never done much with it myself though.

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It should “just work”. This may be helpful.

For the switch2osm site I tested a bunch of OSM tools via WSL - they “just work” for the most part. It’s not something I use in anger for OSM, but on a work Windows PC I use the WSL shell (and associated tools) almost exclusively as opposed to the Windows cmd / powershell equivalents.

Part of the problem with Windows is that there isn’t a built-in 3rd party software distribution offering. Conda (that was linked above) is one of several 3rd-party options. I did look at the one that I tend to use (Chocolatey) and no-one seemed to be maintaining an osmium build there. I suspect the reason is lack of demand, because WSL exists.