Re: Envi Software For Windows 7
Eliane Lebouf
Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is a recovery environment that can repair common causes of unbootable operating systems. WinRE is based on Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), and can be customized with additional drivers, languages, Windows PE Optional Components, and other troubleshooting and diagnostic tools. By default, WinRE is preloaded into the Windows 10 and Windows 11 for desktop editions (Home, Pro, Enterprise, and Education) and Windows Server 2016, and later, installations.
PowerShell can access and manage environment variables in any of the supportedoperating system platforms. The PowerShell environment provider lets you get,add, change, clear, and delete environment variables in the current console.
Environment variables, unlike other types of variables in PowerShell, arealways stored as a string and can't be empty. Also unlike other variables,they're inherited by child processes, such as local background jobs and thesessions in which module members run. This makes environment variables wellsuited to storing values that are needed in both parent and child processes.
The Process scope contains the environment variables available in the currentprocess, or PowerShell session. This list of variables is inherited from theparent process and is constructed from the variables in the Machine andUser scopes.
When you change environment variables in PowerShell, the change affects onlythe current session. This behavior resembles the behavior of the Set commandin the Windows Command Shell and the Setenv command in UNIX-basedenvironments. To change values in the Machine or User scopes, you must use themethods of the System.Environment class.
PowerShell's Environment provider gives you an interface for interactingwith environment variables in a format that resembles a file system drive. Itlets you get, add, change, clear, and delete environment variables and valuesin PowerShell.
You can also copy the environment variable with Copy-Item, set the value ofan environment variable with Set-Item, list environment variables withGet-Item, and delete the environment variable with Remove-Item.
You can remove an environment variable with the SetEnvironmentVariablemethod by specifying an empty string for the variable's value. For example,to remove the Foo environment variable:
On Windows, there are three methods for making a persistent change to anenvironment variable: setting them in your profile, using theSetEnvironmentVariable method, and using the System Control Panel.
On Windows, you can specify a scope for the SetEnvironmentVariable methodas the third parameter to set the environment variable in that scope. Themachine and user scopes both persist outside of the current process, allowingyou to save a new or changed environment variable.
In the System Control Panel, you can add or edit existing environment variablesin the User and System (Machine) scopes. Windows writes these values tothe Registry so that they persist across sessions and system restarts.
PowerShell features can use environment variables to store user preferences.These variables work like preference variables, but they're inherited by childsessions of the sessions in which they're created. For more information aboutpreference variables, see about_Preference_Variables.
The $env:PSModulePath environment variable contains a list of folderlocations that are searched to find modules and resources. On Windows, thelist of folder locations is separated by the semi-colon (;) character. Onnon-Windows platforms, the colon (:) separates the folder locations in theenvironment variable.
To change the default location of the cache, set the environment variablebefore starting PowerShell. Changes to this environment variable only affectchild processes. The value should name a full path (including filename) thatPowerShell has permission to create and write files.
When writing out the module analysis cache, PowerShell checks for modulesthat no longer exist to avoid an unnecessarily large cache. Sometimes thesechecks aren't desirable, in which case you can turn them off by setting thisenvironment variable value to 1.
The $env:PATH environment variable contains a list of folder locations thatthe operating system searches for executable files. On Windows, the list offolder locations is separated by the semi-colon (;) character. Onnon-Windows platforms, the colon (:) separates the folder locations in theenvironment variable.
To ensure that scripts for another scripting language run in the currentconsole session, add the file extension used by the scripting language. Forexample, to run Python scripts in the current console, add the .pyextension to the environment variable. For Windows to support the .pyextension as an executable file you must register the file extension usingthe ftype and assoc commands of the CMD command shell. PowerShell has nodirect method to register the file handler. For more information, see thedocumentation for the ftype command.
Beginning in PowerShell 7.2, the following environment variables can be used tocontrol the Virtual Terminal features like ANSI escape sequences that colorizeoutput. Support for ANSI escape sequences can be turned off using the TERMor NO_COLOR environment variables.
I am wondering what environment I should be focused on developing in? Is it standard in GIS development to be comfortable developing in a Windows environment, since Esri software works best on that operating system? Or is it more standard/expected to be comfortable working in a Linux environment?
All that said, I would personally try to dabble in both. I prefer to do a lot of my work in Linux, and being comfortable in that environment is very useful. We also don't exclusively use Esri tools, and certain other things we use are developed in a Linux-first sort of way, so it's good to be able to use those tools in an environment they were designed for.
Most Windows machines should let you run Windows Subsystem for Linux ( -us/windows/wsl/install), so even if you're stuck using a Windows machine for your work, you can still use that. There's also Docker, if you want to run a small throwaway Linux container on your machine to mess around. Some Esri products, like Notebook Server, are running Docker containers, so being familiar with them can be good to learn in general.
Both Windows and Linux platforms are widely utilised in GIS development, depending on the project and company for which you are working. Many GIS software programmes, notably Esri's ArcGIS suite, are intended to perform best on Windows, thus familiarity with that operating system can be beneficial in many situations. However, certain businesses, particularly those producing open-source GIS software or dealing with enormous datasets, may choose to operate in a Linux environment.
I'll offer my 2 cents. GIS development depends heavily on the product and/or project of interest. For example, making desktop apps or add-ins should probably focus on a Windows environment, and the .NET languages. If you're making web apps, I'd say the OS is immaterial, and to focus on the JavaScript language. For a runtime app (e.g. iOS), you'd want the suitable OS (e.g. macOS) and the appropriate language (e.g. Swift).
In terms of GIS development, it's important to have a strong foundation in both programming and GIS. It's common for GIS developers to have experience working with Esri software on a Windows environment, as Esri is a leading provider of GIS software and their products work best on Windows. However, it's also important to be familiar with other operating systems, such as Linux, as many GIS tools and platforms are cross-platform.In general, the most important thing is to have a strong foundation in programming languages commonly used in GIS development, such as Python, Java, and JavaScript. It's also important to be familiar with GIS tools and platforms such as Esri ArcGIS, QGIS, and OpenLayers. Having experience with cloud platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, can also be beneficial as more and more GIS applications are moving to the cloud. Networking and professional development opportunities can also be beneficial for moving forward in a GIS development career path. Attending conferences and events, joining GIS user groups, and participating in online forums can help you stay up to date with the latest trends and technologies in the field.
However, I want to be able to choose a particular virtual environment in which to run the script. I don't have much knowledge of venv, and I typically use it by opening cmd and running Scripts\activate.bat in the desired virtual environment directory.
Though the answer by mx0 above seems to work, I have set up Task Scheduler to run a flask web app on bootup. In this case, manual starting works fine, but manual ending does not. Ending the task kills the cmd.exe task that sets up the virtual environment, but the python.exe continues to run.
Let Windows Task Scheduler or taskengine.exe launch python.exe directly without a middle-man script.Previous answers launch python.exe directly with py script, this works for simple modules, but not for some binary module in conda environment.
For binary modules in conda to work, you can create a utility module named e.g. patch_conda_path to patch PATH variable in os.environ based on sys.base_exec_prefix. Copy the patching work that activate.bat does, just in python.below example has been tested for conda virtual environment:
With the help of ChatGPT I managed to make a small '.bat' script that can activate a virtual environment then run a python script. The neat part is that every element is in the project's root folder so you don't have to think too much about file paths.
I was looking for a way to set the environment path variable with a .cmd file.
When the path variable was getting too long, I got some errors.
Just add the needed variables to 'Set Path variable' below
Check the current value of your path variable and add to the script
Run the script as administrator!
Open a new console window and it should work e.g. php -v