Skip to content

Add notice about lack of Windows support in the README intro #2502

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Oct 7, 2021

Conversation

SimonEast
Copy link
Contributor

I added a notice about lack of Windows support in the README intro, as it's easily missed, and I've seen posts online recommending it without noting this.

README.md Outdated
@@ -55,7 +55,7 @@
<!-- END doctoc generated TOC please keep comment here to allow auto update -->

## About
nvm is a version manager for [node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/), designed to be installed per-user, and invoked per-shell. `nvm` works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL.
nvm is a version manager for [node.js](https://nodejs.org/en/), designed to be installed per-user, and invoked per-shell. `nvm` works on any POSIX-compliant shell (sh, dash, ksh, zsh, bash), in particular on these platforms: unix, macOS, and windows WSL (but *not* the standard Windows command prompt nor PowerShell).
Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Copy link
Contributor Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

Yes, I realise it's mentioned in more detail further down, but it's several page-scrolls down and easily missed there. Considering Windows is still in use on 75% of desktops, I think it should be made pretty clear that it's not going to work on the majority of machines without additional prerequisites.

Copy link
Member

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

It’s not in use on 75% of developer desktops, though - i very much doubt it’s anywhere close to half.

@AjayChambers
Copy link

I was an avid linux user, recently I switched back to windows, I didn't have a choice, it was required by an instatution to wich I belong to. Open source developers maybe les than half, but Microsoft has been a major player in the development of some big technologies, (including Azure & VSCode), in the past 5 years. Windows has a lot of perks for companies to use, and I doubt it ever fell below half IMO. I think the point here is Windows is getting popular again, and Windows 11 releases in a few days. Also, even if only 20% of devs used it, thats a high enough number to make sure they are aware that this project is not somthing they can use unless the use a VM or WSL.

@ljharb
Copy link
Member

ljharb commented Sep 29, 2021

@W3Dojo the tagline of the repo says "POSIX-compliant bash script", the install instructions say to use curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.38.0/install.sh | bash which windows doesn't have, https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#about explicitly mentions Windows WSL.

What if instead of modifying this sentence, we changed "Windows WSL" so it linked to the https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm#important-notes section?

@SimonEast
Copy link
Contributor Author

The Windows platform is in use by 53.1% of developers according to the StackExchange 2020 survey. I would still like to see a clearer message in the intro.

I don't think the majority of developers would know the meaning of "POSIX-compliant shell", nor would immediately know what WSL is.

But I suppose a link to the section further down is better than nothing.

@ljharb
Copy link
Member

ljharb commented Oct 1, 2021

@SimonEast the percentage that would be relevant is the percentage of node developers, but fair.

Copy link
Member

@ljharb ljharb left a comment

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

updated per comment

@ljharb ljharb merged commit 055af09 into nvm-sh:master Oct 7, 2021
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Projects
None yet
Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

4 participants