circleci-cli: Unable to run `circleci local execute` from windows machine

Running docker on windows:

> docker version
Client:
 Version:           18.06.1-ce
 API version:       1.38
 Go version:        go1.10.3
 Git commit:        e68fc7a
 Built:             Tue Aug 21 17:21:34 2018
 OS/Arch:           windows/amd64
 Experimental:      false

Server:
 Engine:
  Version:          18.06.1-ce
  API version:      1.38 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.10.3
  Git commit:       e68fc7a
  Built:            Tue Aug 21 17:29:02 2018
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     true

Attempting to build locally results in: There ins’t any extra information when running it with the --verbose flag.

Docker image digest: sha256:3d88cfffd448da07ff8ced22ccdca5adc09ff18e87dc7db9b8af5b8a47647c08
Error: failed to execute docker: not supported by windows

Which would make sense given that "--volume", "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock" wouldn’t work on windows.

After some googlefoo - -v //var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock seems to work from windows

But I still have issues getting the docker to build by manually running it for now with:

docker run --interactive --tty --rm ^
    -v //var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ^
    -v %cd%:/root/.circleci ^
    --workdir /%cd%\ ^
      circleci/picard circleci build -c /root/.circleci/config.yml

Error:   error starting container <>: Error response from daemon: invalid mode: /tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo

Error:
Unexpected environment preparation error: Error response from daemon: invalid mode: /tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo

Step failed
Task failed

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created 6 years ago
Reactions: 16
Comments: 18 (5 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@marcomorain how do you measure demand? In addition to the factor noted by @TimMensch I would note that many Windows developers are probably just giving up as soon as it doesn’t work (as I almost did), but would use it if it did work. How do you know how many of those there are?

+21

phoogenb on Sep 23, 2020

Any chance of CircleCI offering a bounty for the PR?

This is a key feature you’re missing – still nearly half of developers use Windows, and just because you’re not using it internally doesn’t mean you’re not losing customers (like myself) who do a lot of CircleCI development but who feel ignored when an issue as critical as this sits ignored for two years.

The whole “lack of demand” can be explained by the fact that none of your instructions even tell people where to find the circleci image; instead you need to go on a bit of a scavenger hunt to even find it.

And it’s a bit harder to motivate to do development that primarily benefits a commercial company.

+21

TimMensch on May 26, 2020

It’s been 4 years now…

Please guys, dear maintainers of CircleCI, we really want to be able to run a container locally, otherwise the CLI is useless to us. Most of us (if not all of us) will not leave the comfort of Windows (yes, I said comfort), and if we were forced to choose between moving to another os, or… NOT using the circleci CLI, we would (sadly) choose the latter.

+14

talkohavy on Sep 3, 2022

Hi @ashthespy - thanks for creating the issue.

We don’t support running builds on Windows at present. I think we should make that error message far more clear, too - “not supported by windows”.

That said, there are no fundamental reasons why we don’t support Windows right now. It’s because of lack of demand, coupled with no-one on the team here using Windows as a dev machine.

I’d be happy to review a PR to get this working.

Marc

marcomorain on Oct 8, 2018

And still we wait … We have a complex tech stack with older code in .Net Framework (requiring msbuild to compile) and newer stuff in .Net 7, Node, TypeScript, etc. It is problematic for us to only be able to build a portion of our code-base, and not practical to rewrite millions of lines of legacy code.

Walt-LiveRez on May 2, 2023

this local build doesn’t seem to follow workflows, only runs the first task?

That is correct, workflows are not supported locally.

dnephin on Oct 11, 2018

@marcomorain if you could point me towards the right requirements to get the docker container up and building, I’d be happy to submit a PR with the debugged and working config.

In the current form, the docker run command doesn’t work with my windows setup. Especially the -v pwd:pwd mapping. The docker host doesn’t know of my current pwd.

I also tired it with:

docker run --interactive --tty --rm ^
    -v //var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock ^
    -v %cd%:/root/.circleci ^
      circleci/picard circleci build -c /root/.circleci/config.yml
      REM --workdir /%cd%\ ^

Which hangs at:

====>> Spin up Environment
Build-agent version 0.1.750-336e0196 (2018-09-13T19:48:06+0000)
Starting container <>
  using image <>@sha256:66bbb63816fd3beed4aaf1f31329710db4badaf4487153b023fac9199a8da747

Using build environment variables:
  BASH_ENV=/tmp/.bash_env-localbuild-1539016525
  CI=true
  CIRCLECI=true
  CIRCLE_BRANCH=
  CIRCLE_BUILD_NUM=
  CIRCLE_JOB=build
  CIRCLE_NODE_INDEX=0
  CIRCLE_NODE_TOTAL=1
  CIRCLE_REPOSITORY_URL=
  CIRCLE_SHA1=
  CIRCLE_SHELL_ENV=/tmp/.bash_env-localbuild-1539016525
  CIRCLE_WORKING_DIRECTORY=~/project

====>> Checkout code
  #!/bin/bash -eo pipefail
mkdir -p /root/project && cp -r /tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo/. /root/project
cp: skipping file '/tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo/./port/README', as it was replaced while being copied
cp: cannot access '/tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo/./host_mnt/c/Recovery/Logs': Permission denied
cp: cannot access '/tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo/./host_mnt/c/Documents and Settings': Permission denied
cp: cannot access '/tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo/./host_mnt/c/System Volume Information': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat '/tmp/_circleci_local_build_repo/./host_mnt/c/swapfile.sys': Device or resource busy

It looks like the container is trying to access my C: and thus doesn’t succeed?

Setting the current --workdir I get the invalid mode error as above.

ashthespy on Oct 8, 2018