Windows 11 for developers

Here are guidelines for settings up a TU Delft Windows 11 installation for software development. These are from personal experience and have been gathered building DIPlib and editing the sysman pages.

Admin by Request

To obtain admin rights you need to install Admin by Request. This will give you elevated (admin) permissions for two hours; you can start this program as many times as needed. The program name is Administrator access. Make sure you start your application in which you need admin rights after turning on Admin by Request. Also note that for some applications you will need to right-click and select Run as administrator

Powershell

Most commands are best given using Powershell. This is preferred over Command Prompt. Some useful Powershell commands:

• get-command shh: this will give you the location of the program given (in this case ssh)

• set-executionpolicy -executionpolicy unrestricted -scope currentuser: allow unsigned programs to run, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.core/about/about_execution_policies

• more commands in the instructions below…

SSH

SSH is available in Windows 11. Key pairs can be generated with ssh-keygen and should be stored in C:\Users\<username>\.ssh. To use private keys in the keychain, setup ssh-agent as follows:

• start powershell with admin rights and type:

  # autostart ssh-agent
  get-service ssh-agent | set-service -startuptype automatic
  # manually start ssh-agent
  start-service ssh-agent
  # echo status
  get-service ssh-agent
  

• and add keys with ssh-add <private key>. Note: you will need to add these keys each time after restart of the computer

More information: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/openssh/openssh_keymanagement

Git

git config set --global user.name "<username>"
git config set --global user.email "<e-mail>"

CMake

• to have cmake find java, point JAVA_HOME to the location of the java-package.
• to have cmake find matlab, point MATLAB_ROOT to the location of the matlab-installation.

Visual Studio

Visual Studio Code

Python

uv

Spack [experimental]