Every once in a while the Continuous Integration reminds me that the code I write isn't "that" portable. I develop on Linux, push to the SCM and the CI goes out and builds on several Unixes and Windows.
Fixing windows build issues through the CI takes quite a while. It is far easier to have a local windows build-environment around to do the build, testing before you push. You could make that quite efficient by installing Windows in a VM, use shared-folders, use cygwin+sshd to log into it from the command-line ...
... or you simplify it even more and just use wine.
The main reason for me to go this path:
- I don't need a GUI (I could start the VM headless)
- I don't want to polute windows with cygwin (I could use WinRM)
- I don't need most of the things a full …