3 Windows development-box provisioning scripts.
5 `setup-windows.bat` takes a fresh Windows install to a working C++ / native
6 development environment: editors and shells, Python, the Visual Studio 2022
7 toolchain (including the Clang and Windows XP targeting toolsets), the Windows
8 Driver Kit, and a handful of analysis tools (Sysinternals, OpenCppCoverage,
9 BinSkim, the Windows Performance Toolkit). It also sets the box up to be driven
10 remotely: OpenSSH Server plus an rsync build for Windows, which is what makes a
11 throwaway VM reachable from a Linux host.
17 | `setup-windows.bat` | Entry point. Runs the winget installs, then launches the elevated half and prints its log, then runs the non-elevated script. |
18 | `setup-windows-no-uac.ps1` | The non-elevated, per-user half: WinMerge and BinSkim on the user `PATH`, and the global git config (identity, plus `core.sshCommand`). Can also be run directly from an ordinary prompt. |
19 | `setup-windows-with-uac.ps1` | The elevated half, started via UAC by the batch file. Enables `ssh-agent`, installs the OpenSSH Client and Server capabilities and starts `sshd`, unpacks the `rsync-windows` release zip for this architecture (`rsync.exe` plus the `ssh.exe` it runs) into `C:\Tools\rsync` on the machine `PATH`, then installs Visual Studio 2022 Community with the required components, the WDK, and the Windows Performance Toolkit, and finally grants one ordinary account the rights to collect ETW traces without elevation. Can also be run directly from an Administrator prompt — pass `-TraceUser DOMAIN\user` to say who gets those rights. |
20 | `setup-windows-7-test-env.bat` | Prepares a **Windows 7 VM** as a test target driven from the host by `VBoxManage guestcontrol`. Copy it into the guest and run it there; it is idempotent, so re-run it after any snapshot restore. The per-user half needs no UAC (crash-dialog suppression, no screen blanking, a staging directory, the shared folder on `Z:`); the machine-wide half is skipped with a notice unless run elevated inside the guest. It then reports what the box can actually test: DWM composition, printers, audio capture devices. |
24 1. **Edit `setup-windows-no-uac.ps1` first.** The global git identity near the
25 top of the file is empty:
28 $GitUserName = '' # e.g. 'Ada Lovelace'
29 $GitUserEmail = '' # e.g. 'ada@example.com'
32 Fill in your own name and email, or leave them empty to keep your identity
33 per-repository - the script skips `user.name` / `user.email` rather than
34 writing a placeholder, and says so. Everything else in that script is set
37 2. Run it from a normal (non-elevated) prompt:
43 It will raise a single UAC prompt for the elevated half. Accept it — declining
44 leaves Visual Studio and the WDK uninstalled, and the script says so.
46 3. Restart your shell afterwards so the updated user `PATH` is picked up, and
47 reboot if a step reported that a restart was required.
51 - The elevated half writes a transcript to `setup-windows-uac.log` next to the
52 script; the batch file prints it when the elevated window closes. The log is
53 gitignored, as it contains local paths.
54 - **git uses a Win32-OpenSSH client.** `setup-windows-no-uac.ps1` sets
55 `core.sshCommand`. Git for Windows otherwise prefers its own bundled MSYS2
56 `ssh.exe`, which cannot reach the Windows `ssh-agent` service that the elevated
57 half enables - Win32-OpenSSH publishes the agent on a named pipe the MSYS2
58 build does not speak. Without this, keys loaded with `ssh-add` from PowerShell
59 are invisible to `git`, and a push falls back to hunting for a key file and
60 prompting for its passphrase. The value uses forward slashes on purpose: git
61 parses `core.sshCommand` with shell quoting rules, in which a backslash is an
63 - **Which `ssh.exe` git gets.** `C:\Tools\rsync\ssh.exe` — the fast build the
64 elevated half unpacks — if it is there, `%WINDIR%/System32/OpenSSH/ssh.exe`
65 otherwise. It is the same client with the same `~/.ssh`, agent and
66 `known_hosts`; the difference is the stdin pump, and without it anything git
67 *pushes* is capped at ~17 MB/s. Candidates are tried by **running** them
68 (`ssh -V`), not by `Test-Path`: the fast build needs a `libcrypto.dll` that an
69 image without the OpenSSH Client capability does not have, and a client that
70 will not start should be found here rather than on the next `git push`.
71 This is also why `setup-windows.bat` now runs the elevated half **first** — the
72 fast `ssh.exe` has to exist before the git config step can prefer it. The
73 non-elevated half still runs even when the elevated one failed; it just falls
74 back. Re-run `setup-windows-no-uac.ps1` on its own at any time to re-pick.
75 - All three scripts are idempotent — re-running skips anything already installed.
76 BinSkim in particular checks NuGet for the newest stable version *before*
77 downloading: the package is a self-contained .NET build well over 100 MB, and
78 re-provisioning an up-to-date box should not pay for it. The installed version
79 is tracked in `nupkg-version.txt` beside the tool.
80 - `setup-windows-no-uac.ps1` runs its steps independently: one failing warns and
81 the rest still run, and it exits 1 if any did. The `.bat` reports that and
82 carries on to the elevated half, which is the part worth the UAC prompt. Use
83 `-Skip` to re-run a subset, e.g. `.\setup-windows-no-uac.ps1 -Skip BinSkim`.
84 Run it **non-elevated**: it writes per-user state (the `HKCU` `PATH`, the
85 `.gitconfig` under `%USERPROFILE%`), so an elevated run would configure the
86 administrator's profile instead. It warns if you do.
87 - **Remote access.** OpenSSH Server is installed from the Windows on-demand
88 capability (10/1809+), set to start automatically, and given an inbound TCP 22
89 firewall rule on *all* profiles — a VM's host-only or bridged adapter is
90 routinely classified Public, which is the usual reason a running `sshd` is
91 unreachable. Windows ships no `rsync`, so a build of it
92 ([nuket/rsync-windows](https://github.com/nuket/rsync-windows)) is installed to
93 `C:\Tools\rsync` and added to the **machine** `PATH`. That last detail matters:
94 the remote end of an `rsync` runs non-interactively, with no login shell, and
95 Win32-OpenSSH builds that environment from the registry `PATH` rather than from
96 a profile. Key auth needs `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` ACL'd to just you and
97 `SYSTEM`; accounts in the Administrators group use
98 `C:\ProgramData\ssh\administrators_authorized_keys` instead.
99 - **rsync brings its own `ssh.exe`.** That release ships as one zip per
100 architecture — `rsync-windows-x64.zip` / `rsync-windows-x86.zip`, each holding
101 `rsync.exe`, an `ssh.exe`, `COPYING.txt` and `NOTICE-ssh.txt` — and the
102 elevated half picks the zip for the OS bitness, verifies it against the
103 published `.sha256`, and unpacks the pair together. Together is the point:
104 `rsync.exe` prefers an `ssh.exe` sitting in its own directory, and the release
105 builds one because the client Windows ships reads its stdin 3 KB at a time,
106 which holds a transfer *from* the box at ~17 MB/s however fast the link is.
107 Nothing else about it differs — same `~/.ssh`, same `ssh-agent`, same
108 `known_hosts` — and a bare `ssh` still resolves to the in-box client, which
109 sits ahead of `C:\Tools\rsync` on the `PATH`. It links against the
110 `libcrypto.dll` the **OpenSSH Client** capability puts in `System32` (Windows'
111 own LibreSSL, which uses AES-NI) and ships no copy of its own, so the elevated
112 half installs that capability first and falls back to `rsync.exe` alone,
113 warning, on an image that will not offer it.
114 - The `rsync` download follows the `releases/latest/download/` redirect rather
115 than the GitHub API: unauthenticated API calls are rate-limited to 60/hour per
116 IP, which a provisioning run behind a shared NAT can genuinely exhaust. To hold
117 a box on a known build, pin the tag in `$RsyncUrl`
118 (`.../releases/download/<tag>/<asset>`) instead.
119 - Visual Studio is installed in three labelled passes (base workload, Clang/LLVM,
120 XP toolset) so a failure identifies which component group is responsible.
121 - **Windows Performance Analyzer is not part of Visual Studio.** VS has its own
122 Performance Profiler, which is a different, `.diagsession`-based tool and
123 cannot open an `.etl`. WPA ships with `xperf` and `wpr` in the Windows
124 Performance Toolkit, which exists in exactly two places: as an optional
125 *feature* of the Windows SDK (`OptionId.WindowsPerformanceToolkit`) and inside
126 the Windows ADK, which bundles the same toolkit. Whether the SDK install that
127 Visual Studio performs selects that feature varies by version, so the elevated
128 half **detects first** — `%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Windows Kits\10\Windows
129 Performance Toolkit`, its 64-bit twin, and the ADK location — and only falls
130 back to `winget install Microsoft.WindowsADK` when nothing is there. It then
131 re-asserts that directory on the machine `PATH` (the toolkit's own installer
132 usually does this, and the Start Menu gets *Windows Kits > Windows Performance
133 Toolkit* shortcuts for WPA and WPR). To install just the toolkit instead of the
134 whole ADK, run the standalone SDK setup with
135 `winsdksetup.exe /features OptionId.WindowsPerformanceToolkit /q`. A newer WPA
136 also exists in the Microsoft Store (`winget install --id 9N0W1B2BXGNZ --source
137 msstore`); it is not installed here because the Store source needs an
138 interactive, signed-in session, which the unattended elevated half does not
140 - **Tracing without a UAC prompt.** `xperf` and `wpr` fail for a standard user in
141 two different ways, because two different things are missing:
144 xperf -on base -> NT Kernel Logger: Access is denied. (0x5)
145 wpr -start GeneralProfile -> Failed to enable the policy to profile system performance.
148 Creating or controlling *any* ETW session — even a user-mode one naming a
149 single provider — is checked against the security descriptor ETW keeps per
150 provider GUID under `HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WMI\Security`, whose
151 default grants the session-control rights to SYSTEM, Administrators, the
152 service accounts and `BUILTIN\Performance Log Users`, and to nobody else.
153 Switching on the *kernel* provider on top of that additionally needs the
154 `SeSystemProfilePrivilege` user right ("Profile system performance"), held by
155 default only by Administrators and `NT SERVICE\WdiServiceHost` — that is the
156 one `wpr` names. So the elevated half grants the privilege to the **group** and
157 puts the account in the group; enabling another account afterwards is just
158 `net localgroup "Performance Log Users" <user> /add`. `SeDebugPrivilege` is
159 deliberately *not* granted: CPU sampling and stack walks of your own processes
160 do not need it, and it is equivalent to handing out administrator.
162 Two consequences worth knowing. Both a privilege and a group membership are
163 read into the access token **at logon**, so the account must sign out and back
164 in — any new logon does it, and an `ssh` login into the box is the quick way to
165 check without dropping the desktop. And this only helps a **non-admin**
166 account: UAC hands an administrator a filtered token carrying just five
167 harmless privileges, so an admin's ordinary shell still cannot trace however
168 the policy reads. Verify from the target account, unelevated:
171 whoami /priv | findstr SeSystemProfilePrivilege
172 xperf -on base ; xperf -stop C:\Temp\trace.etl
175 Analysis never needed any of this — `wpa.exe` opens an existing `.etl` as a
176 plain user. This is only about collection.
177 - The scripts were extracted from a native Windows project, so the component
178 selection is tuned for that: Spectre-mitigated runtimes, the v141/XP toolset,
179 and driver-kit headers. Trim the component lists in the `.ps1` if you don't
180 need them — each group is a plain array near the top.