I would. I can understand installing Cygwin or MSYS2 to provide Linux-style tools to make things easier; having 'ls' and the rest available at the Command Line is useful to have even if not cross-compiling. But having to fire-up WSL is merely an alternative to any lack of Native Windows cross-compiler, and similar for other VM approaches.Many would argue, then, that that's not really compiling on Windows. If you have to run some sort of Linux virtual machine, then you're not really doing it natively on Windows. They would say that's cheating.You can cross-compile C for a Raspberry Pi Zero W on Windows 11, but it requires a Linux-like environment such as WSL or Cygwin, a toolchain that ...
When the Pico arrived, development under Windows was entirely native; a native cross-compiler, using Microsoft 'nmake', and a native build of 'cmake'. That worked well, apart from compiling MicroPython because they had managed to craft their 'CMakeLists.txt' in such a way that it was incompatible with 'nmake'. With some hacking that could be made to work using only Native Windows tools.
I would say Native Windows development was flawless except when, through ignorance or malice, a developer had made it otherwise.
If one can cross-compile for RP2 and other target platforms using only Native Windows tools; there seems to be no reason one couldn't do likewise for any platform including for Pi and other Linux systems.
I can appreciate the comments from 'pmunts' that things are not always easy and there are hurdles to be jumped - and thanks for those.
The problem there seems to be two-fold; having the skills and knowledge to solve the issues, and tool developers not being willing to address the issues which can make that challenging to do. One might suspect that not addressing the issues stems from some kind of desire to ensure it's neither simple nor easy to build those tools for Windows use. One can only speculate on why that may be.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Thu Jan 01, 2026 1:34 pm