Windows version stalls at initialization

[Gman0909]

Windows version (on Windows 10 Creator's Update, x64) stalls at a grey screen with an animated square. Window title is 'initial'.

[blahah]

this might be the same issue as #58 with case-sensitive file-paths

I'll test on Windows tonight and check

[blahah]

Possibly fixed in beta4: https://github.com/codeforscience/sciencefair/releases/tag/v1.0.0-beta4 (downloads will appear when they have finished building)

[Gman0909]

Still not loading beyond the 'initial' grey screen on Windows 10

[joehand]

@gmaciocci, I had similar issue and was able to resolve it by closing the app, removing the ~/.sciencefair folder, and opening the app again.

[blahah]

OK I'll debug on a Windows machine this evening

[Gman0909]

@joehand no luck on Windows 10.

[blahah]

OK I have identified a set of bugs that are Windows-specific:

• The nanoraf router that is used by choo can't resolve routes in electron+windows. Solution is to use hash routes instead of slash routes (e.g. #home instead of /home) thanks @yoshuawuyts
• The discovery-swarm module uses utp-native for UTP, but it's silently failing on windows10, and because we have TCP turned off we end up with no way to connect at all (rerpoted issue with tcp: false, if utp-native require fails, there's no server mafintosh/discovery-swarm#27). Short term solution: turn on TCP and UTP. Long term solution: make UTP work on windows.
• The append-tree module used by hyperdrive uses / as the path separator, which breaks on Win (reported issue should use path.sep instead of / for cross-OS compat mafintosh/append-tree#7). Solution: fix append-tree so it uses path.sep which is OS-aware.

I need to fix the above before I can see if there are any more issues, as I can't progress to the point of having metadata synced right now.

[blahah]

@mafintosh preferred that the solution to the append-tree issue should be in hyperdrive, keeping append-tree abstract. So here's the PR for the fix: holepunchto/hyperdrive#159

[blahah]

Found another windows quirk - CSS urls for local files don't work as normal, so node's usually cross platform path-joining breaks things.

[blahah]

v1.0.0-beta5 contains all the above fixes - I suspect there will be more Windows-specific issues but it was becoming impractical to find them without a new release.

Anyone with a Windows machine please feel free to try out this release and report issues in this thread.

[Gman0909]

beta 5 appears to have broken the Mac release (Sierra 10.12.3):

• starting with a nuked .sciencefait folder allows the app to initialise to 99%.
• App gets stuck synching initial data at 99%
• closing the app and restarting results in the app getting stuck at the grey screen with the animated squares.

[cboursnell]

Beta5 for windows now installs, opens, passes the square loading logo and then gets stuck at 0% of 'syncing initial data...'.
If you close it down and reopen it, it then gets stuck at the square loading logo, unless you delete the .sciencefair directory in home.

[blahah]

@cboursnell if you nuke the ~/.sciencefair dir and run the app, is there any error in the console?

You can find the console in developer tools with: Ctrl Shift I or F12

[pkraker]

EDIT: sorry, I just realized that this was already reported in the bug referenced above.

This is the error that I get on Win7:

Uncaught ReferenceError: makesafe is not defined
at module.exports.img (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\client\lib\imgpath.js:8)
at CachedSearch._render (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\client\views\search.js:57)
at CachedSearch.CacheElement.render (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\node_modules\cache-component\index.js:37)
at module.exports (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\client\views\search.js:78)
at module.exports (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\client\views\main.js:25)
at module.exports (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\client\views\home.js:5)
at C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\node_modules\choo\index.js:43
at emit (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\node_modules\nanorouter\index.js:47)
at Function.<anonymous> (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\node_modules\choo\index.js:58)
at redraw (C:\Program Files\ScienceFair\resources\app\node_modules\nanoraf\index.js:28)

[blahah]

thanks @pkraker, that was fixed in 5037dab

release coming up after I finish some more bugfixes/enhancements

[blahah]

I think all the issues raised here have been solved by https://github.com/codeforscience/sciencefair/releases/tag/v1.0.0-beta9

As far as I can tell, this issue is now the major/only Windows bug - if anyone can spare some energy to help debug it I would greatly appreciate it.

I'm closing this issue as the specific problems listed here has been solved. Thanks all for your help :)