Raiden Client for Windows

[christianbrb]

Abstract

Make Raiden installable on notebooks/servers/workstations running Windows.

Motivation

Personally, I am running windows 10. After making some attempts to run Raiden on the windows subsystem (WSL) and Docker, I went back to use VirtualBox. It works, but also needs time to maintain and performance isn't that good.

In addition, there are discussions on Reddit about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/raidennetwork/comments/9ced2a/can_you_run_raiden_on_windows/ https://www.reddit.com/r/raidennetwork/comments/9e2vgh/raiden_network_node_linux_vs_windows/

Specification

Backwards Compatibility

[BCsRock]

After making some attempts to run Raiden on the windows subsystem (WSL) and Docker, I went back to use VirtualBox.

What were your problems with Docker?

I am currently working on a small docker image pulling the latest stable binary (not build from source).

This should be fine to use on Windows machines too. (With the usual problems of directory mounting etc.)

[ulope]

I've successfully tested the linux binary release directly on WSL a few months ago. Worked fine without VMs, docker or anything else.

[pepae]

Same here, tested it yesterday with Infura.

Because I used Infura and because I didn't have Geth installed on WSL, I had to manually copy a wallet json from somewhere else into the respective directory, otherwise my steps where the same as described in the installation section of the documentation. Client + Webui started fine, I could join a token network, however, I couldn't test transfers as I was on the non-active Ropsten testnet smart contracts.

I can write up a mini guide if that becomes necessary at some point and if we have a place for it.

[CosminNechifor]

@christianbrb I've tried to create windows binaries on a win10 VM but ended up failing, always ending up with a different problem.

My question is: Do we really want to provide native windows binaries? I am asking this because I don't see the need. The user could use the linux binary inside WSL or use the docker image. In my opinion we should focus more on improving the tutorials for those.