Installing Exponential on Windows

Exponential 6 is written and tested on Linux. On Windows it is expected to work, but not tested by the project: the kernel knows Windows paths, and the official PHP builds for Windows carry the extensions it needs. This page says what is known, and the simpler path.

Recommended: WSL2

The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 runs a real Linux kernel with a distribution such as Ubuntu or Debian. Inside it, Exponential installs exactly as on Installing Exponential on a Linux/UNIX based system, with Velocity serving the site:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

Keep the installation in the Linux file system (for example under your Linux home directory), not under /mnt/c: it is much faster there, and SQLite's locking works reliably only there.

Native Windows

• Use the official PHP 8 builds for Windows (x64, the non-thread-safe build for FastCGI) with Apache or IIS. They include intl and the other extensions Exponential needs; enable them in php.ini.
• Install Composer with its Windows installer, then run composer create-project se7enxweb/exponential exponential and php bin/php/console exp:install --apply in a command prompt, as on Linux.
• pcntl and posix do not exist on Windows: asynchronous publishing is not available, and Velocity runs its workers as php-cgi processes.
• Velocity's single-file Windows binaries are built without intl, which Exponential requires; run Velocity through Composer's package with the official PHP instead.
• On IIS, the URL Rewrite module and a web.config carry the rules of .htaccess_root: see the IIS example.
• The setup wizard offers only SMTP for outgoing mail on Windows.
• The shell commands in this documentation are written for Linux; translate the paths and the permissions.

More: Operating system support.