# Is BinaryBuilder supposed to work on Windows?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** binarybuilder\
**Created:** [July 22, 2021, 11:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145 "2021-07-22T23:57:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joa-quim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/joa-quim/32/227_2.png) [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2021, 11:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145/1 "2021-07-22T23:57:40Z")

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Made my first try but didn’t go very far (not to mention that it didn’t accept the source location from local disk)

```julia
You have the following contents in your working directory:
  - imgtexture

IOError: could not spawn `docker inspect --type=image julia_binarybuilder_rootfs:v2021.7.13-545434`: no such file or directory (ENOENT)

```

and I have no `- imgtexture` in my working directory

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**Author:** ![giordano](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/giordano/32/2166_2.png) [@giordano](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/giordano)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2021, 12:06am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145/2 "2021-07-23T00:06:49Z")

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Short answer is: no, `BinaryBuilder.jl` doesn’t run on Windows at the moment.

Long answer is: I don’t think there is a reason why it shouldn’t work in principle in the same way it works on macOS (through Docker), but there were some issues that never got addressed because as a matter of fact no one regularly using (let alone developing) `BinaryBuilder.jl` uses Windows:

- [https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/BinaryBuilder.jl/issues/25](https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/BinaryBuilder.jl/issues/25)
- [https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/BinaryBuilder.jl/issues/520](https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/BinaryBuilder.jl/issues/520)

I guess it should work if you run Julia in a Linux Docker container.

If you have access to [GitHub Codespaces](https://github.com/features/codespaces), you can run BinaryBuilder in [Yggdrasil](https://github.com/JuliaPackaging/Yggdrasil/) in your browser, whatever operating system you use: [Home · BinaryBuilder.jl](https://docs.binarybuilder.org/v0.4/#GitHub-Codespaces).

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**Author:** ![joa-quim](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/joa-quim/32/227_2.png) [@joa-quim](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/joa-quim)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2021, 12:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145/3 "2021-07-23T00:19:40Z")

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Ok, thanks. I subscribed the Codespaces beta. Let’s see how long they take to respond.

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**Author:** ![davidanthoff](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/davidanthoff/32/223493_2.png) [@davidanthoff](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/davidanthoff)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2021, 3:19am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145/4 "2021-07-23T03:19:59Z")

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What should also work is install WSL, Docker, VS Code and the Remote Container extension. If you then open the Yggdrasil folder in VS Code, it should offer to provision the same env you would get on Codespaces locally on your machine.

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**Author:** ![blackeneth](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/blackeneth/32/10353_2.png) [@blackeneth](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/blackeneth)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2021, 6:33am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145/5 "2021-07-23T06:33:56Z")

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A little discussed imbalance: 45% of users use Windows, but most developers use Linux or MacOS.

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**Author:** ![giordano](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/giordano/32/2166_2.png) [@giordano](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/giordano)\
**Post date:** [July 23, 2021, 8:01am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/is-binarybuilder-supposed-to-work-on-windows/65145/6 "2021-07-23T08:01:38Z")

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BinaryBuilder is a tool that is used often one-off. I guess that what happens is that if one finds that it doesn’t run natively on Windows they just skip it: the time to look into fixing it would be larger than the time spent into using it, for most users. So in the end there is probably a a bias selection