Windows binaries silently fail to execute

[mcandre]

Hi,

I am trying to use xgo to package MIDI applications. Normally, xgo works very well. But when it builds the Windows binaries for my octane application, they don't run so well.

I get no console output. No visible error message of any kind. Just a 53 exit code (WSL) or -1073741515 (Command Prompt / PowerShell).

Source:

https://github.com/mcandre/octane/tree/ea81e066b6fd7eb56b3fc93dbd26663f28dde679

This application runs well in macOS. The application also runs well on native Linux hosts. But WSL and other Windows environments are problematic.

I should clarify that this application targets libasound2, which is not super easy to integrate with Windows. I'm surprised that native Windows doesn't report a missing external library file.

Interesting thing about this app, it technically builds in WSL with go install ./... but fails with an obvious message about how WSL lacks MIDI devices. When I try to build the application from a pure native Windows environment, then I get compilation errors. The natural xgo process can hide these kinds of build errors, unfortunately.

Just to be clear, I don't fault xgo for these problems. My concern is about enhancing error handling. So that we can catch these quirks earlier in development, reducing the risk of accidentally publishing any broken .EXE files.