Installing Drush on Windows

The drush readme.txt file contains the basics of installing drush. Some special considerations need to be made when installing on windows. Please confirm and give feedback on this. I used the process outlined at: http://drupal.org/node/330023 and it worked for me. Here I am recreating it modifying it for drush 2

Step by Step

1. Install the following external applications.
   • http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libarchive.htm
   • http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gzip.htm
   • http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm
2. Use bsdtar for tar. Its more reliable. Copy the file C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\bsdtar.exe to C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin\tar.exe
3. Set PATH environment variable to include drush, php, and binaries installed above.
   add something like this line to the end of the current value
   ;C:\php;C:\drush;C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32\bin
   The semicolon separates the paths. Paths are those to: php.exe, drush.bat location,and tar/gzip/wget binaries. You will need to reopen your shell/command prompt window to have the path variables refreshed.
4. Now you need to locate your drush.bat file which is located in the root directory of your drush module
   "C:\path-to-drush\drush.bat"
   Open this file and append the full path to the drush.php file
   c:\php\php.exe C:\drush\drush.php %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
   For drush-2.1:
   You just need to put the full path to php, no need to put the full path to drush.
   c:\php\php.exe "%~dp0drush.php" %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

Other How Tos for Installing Drush on Windows

• http://www.starbowconsulting.com/node/103

Gotchas for Windows

• gnuwin32 tar problem. Gnuwin32 tar fails silently because it can not handle windows file paths correctly. In verbose mode error is visible. http://drupal.org/node/483110#comment-2109272

Install Script

Notes below Will be converted into batch install script

Above Direction Work on...

• Windows server 2008. SP2 Tested by: johnbarclay (1/7/2010)
• Windows server 2008. Tested by: johnbarclay (10/2/2009)
• Windows Vista 64-bit Business. Tested by: Gman(10/20/2009)
• Windows Vista 32-bit Business. Tested by: buckley(2010-01-10)
• Windows XP SP3 32-bit. Tested by: phoenix(10/23/2009)