Building both sketches and bootloaders on Window's machines

[KurtE]

At some point, the build process should be setup to allow developers to build natively on a Windows machine.

I am currently able to build on Windows using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), which works. I have used a couple of different
approaches to this:

a) Have the WSL window build it, using the git fork/clone in my windows File system space, like: in the directory:
/mnt/d/github/ArduinoCore-zephyr which works, but the builds going through the WSL reading of the NTFS volume is relatively slow

b) have a separate copy of it in the WSL file space: ~/git/ArduinoCore-zephyr directory and copy the result back to the directory

c) I am not sure it would work but potentially could try to create a link in the arduino hardware directory to the Ubuntu FS...
\wsl.localhost\Ubuntu-24.04\home\kurte\git\ArduinoCore-zephyr

I mostly use b) above. Up until the latest changes I have a simple file (cp_windows.sh) in my WSL directory that tries to
update the windows version:

rsync -av --update --exclude 'build' --exclude 'venv' --exclude 'cores/arduino/api' --exclude 'extra/post_build_tool/distrib' /home/kurte/zephyr_2.1/ArduinoCore-zephyr /mnt/d/github

With the new stuff sync-zephyr-artifacts it looks like I could simply copy up the firmware directory as well as
the variants*\llext-edk directories.
(optionally maybe some of the sources both in cores\arduino as well as the variants...

However
It still be better if we were able to do the zephyr build directly within windows!

It should be possible as I have a zephyr system setup in windows, using the instructions up on:
https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/develop/getting_started/index.html

I am using this to better understand the native zephyr. Currently mainly using this to build for Teensy boards (boards\prjc) Which it is helping me to better understand the system. It is interesting that Zephyr does not recommend using WSL:

Due to issues finding executables, the Zephyr Project doesn’t currently support application flashing using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) (WSL).

Therefore, we don’t recommend using WSL when getting started.

Slightly Off topic:
Currently, I have an open PR to add the support for the Teensy Micromod

For what it is worth, I have a github project with a few things we (@mjs513 and I) have been trying out.
Things like: getting some CDC_ACM to work as well as USARTS, SDIO, SPI...
It is not much but have some really rough sketches up at: https://github.com/KurtE/zephyr_test_sketches
End Off topic:

In summary: it would be great if building natively on windows was supported.

[pillo79]

Would definitely be great to have native Windows builds, but what is done currently after the Zephyr build heavily relies on Linux-specific commands and semantics. We need to asses every step to see what the Windows-compatible alternative is, and I think it's early to commit to this support.

Not ruled out, but probably going to be done after the core is stable(ish) and has actually been released.