Scripting and basic development tools for Windows?

Question

I'm seeking suggestions for tools I can use on Windows to perform simple scripting and general Java development related tasks on a command line or other non-GUI interface (i.e. moving files about, starting/stopping servers, running Maven, etc.). I'm accustomed to using Cygwin which provides a virtual Linux development environment but I have just started a job which has forbidden me to use Cygwin due to security concerns. So now I need to figure out how to do what I used to do on a bash shell command line on in some other way. Should I bite the bullet and learn to use cmd and how to create batch files, or is there a better way? I know I can do lots of this sort of thing via Eclipse, and I'm looking into that already, but I'm used to doing things at a lower level since it gives me a greater sense of control and would like to stick with that approach if possible.

Thanks in advance for your comments and/or suggestions.

--James

Answer 1

If it's basic development stuff you are trying to do, how about Ant? Beats learning DOS any day.

You could also try and learn Python and do your scripting in that.

Answer 2

Windows for a long time had the Windows Scripting Host which lets you write scripts in a variety of languages, including VB or Javascript. Google WSH or Here's a link to the technet intro tutorial. If they've disallowed Cygwin for security concerns....how do they justify using windows??? ;)

And they've probably disabled WSH as well, but it can't hurt to try.

Answer 3

If you already know bash, than you are already allot ahead of most Windows users. Dos batch is quite simplistic and it's not near as powerful as bash, and also, there's not that much to learn about it.

If however, you still want to reuse your Bash know-how, and Cygwin is forbidden, maybe MSys + MingGW is allowd since it's offering a similar solution under Windows but not intrusive.

If you have a good IDE (e.g. IntelliJ + ANT debug plug-in), than you can achieve many things very easily and quickly directly from ANT, leaving not much to do at the command line.

If all above are not an option for you, than a widely used option is to use quick Groovy scripting for such tasks.

I for one prefer the ANT approach since it's really platform independent, and just starting ANT tasks is similar on every platform. Also, there are visual tools for ANT like Virtual ANT that can be quite productive for complex testing scenarios.

Answer 4

You can try the mighty Windows PowerShell :)