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For me the lack of many unix tools is a killer and cygwin doesn't cut it. Many build scripts assume a unixy environment and windows is flat-out not supported. Lack of a proper package manager also makes installing and configuring workstations a hassle.

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It depends on what build scripts you are talking about.

We use Ant, Maven, MSBuild, Powershell, all without UNIX assumptions.

You can configure workstations via Active Directory.

Microsoft is not to blame if developers still insist in having .exe installers instead of adopting .msi packages.

I don't think the package manager matters to be honest.

In python I use pip.

In ruby I use rubygems.

In java I use maven for dependencies.

in node.js I use npm.

So really, even in ubuntu or macosx you will use theses tools.

And you can install them all from chocolatey, if you need a package manager manager.

I've tried having all these installed, and having them all in my %PATH%, along with msys and the platform sdk and so on, but i found I just ended up with my PATH env var being truncated because I went over the environment block size limit. I've given up pretending windows is unixy and ditched it in favor of homebrew on osx

There might limitations, definitely. But move to OSX just because the $PATH has limitations seems a bit overboard.

There are other ways around it.

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