Is there a general purpose scripting language that I can expect to find on (almost) all Windows installations?

Question

I'm deciding on the programming language I want to use for a simple script that will make a HTTP request checking for avaliable updates, download the update if avaliable and execute a program. On MacOS and all distros of Linux I can safely bet that some version of python will be avaliable on the system - and if a Linux distro doesn't come with python, I can safely assume that user of such niche OS will know how to install it.

But with Windows I know that out of the box it doesnt't have python, jre, or even runtime libraries for running CLR languages. Is there anything else beside Powershell I can use?

The program is distributed for Windows as a ZIP file and it's portable (non installer required). This is why I want the language to already to be avaliable on user's system.

Answer 1

You don't need a general-purpose language if you can ship a compiled program – you're already writing a program in the first place; use the same method to write an Updater.exe alongside the main App.exe. For example, as you said you write Lua and bundle it with a runtime to make an .exe file, so you can also do the same to make an updater in Lua.

As for built-ins, PowerShell would be your best option, generally. It runs on .NET CLR and exists somewhere in-between Bash and C# – the language is built mainly for "shell script" type of work, but you have full access to all standard .NET classes (as well as COM and WMI/CIM), and can even use inline C# code via Add-Type if you end up needing FFI (P/Invoke).

There is a built-in HTTP client available as Invoke-RestMethod (irm) and a slightly different HTTP client under Invoke-WebRequest (iwr); one of them can parse JSON and XML. To display a message, you can call .NET WinForms using:

[System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox]::Show("Hello!")

All reasonably recent Windows versions include "Windows PowerShell" version 5. It lacks some niceties, e.g. some options for Invoke-WebRequest are missing, but otherwise is nearly the same as modern PowerShell 7.

The only downside is that PowerShell scripts always show a console window; there is so far no equivalent of pythonw.exe or similar. (It's a long story.)

All other options are slightly worse:

• Compiled .exe that uses WinHTTP (or statically linked to libcurl). You can compile a Windows .exe from Linux using Mingw64.
• VBScript. It's officially "deprecated" now, but it still ships with all Windows versions because of things like slmgr.vbs. Some corporate systems might disable it, but they're equally likely to disable PowerShell.
• Batch script that uses various arcana to unpack an embedded binary such as curl.exe into %TEMP% (as seen in some not-entirely-legal tools).
• Batch script that uses the curl.exe that comes built-in with Windows 10. (I would use Nirsoft's nircmd.exe for displaying the popup message, but nothing stops you from echo-ing a VBScript into %TEMP%, or something else.)

Answer 2

The only languages that can be counted upon to exist in every modern Windows version are:

• Batch/DOS
• PowerShell
• VBScript, with another link here.

Batch is a very old language with multiple idiosyncrasies, but does most jobs (more or less). It can be pretty painful to use for complex operations.

PowerShell is much newer, but its syntax is totally new (one can find examples for almost every question on the internet). It has a steeper learning curve, but can do very many operations, much more extensively than Batch. Some operations require the installation of additional modules from the internet, which might affect negatively your distributed scripts.

VBScript is perhaps the more familiar language-like and is also very ancient. Microsoft would like to see it deprecated. However, so much software has been written using it that it seems unlikely to disappear in the years to come (or ever).

Answer 3

A lot of scripting languages have a way to package them into a single-file binary executable.

The usual strategy is to include a custom interpreter executable that loads scripts from itself (read itself as the source file) and the zip file format. It works because the metadata in zip files are stored at the end of the file but executables are loaded from the beginning of the file. Therefore it is possible to simply join any executable with any zip file into a single file making that file both a valid executable and a valid zip file. So now all you need is a script interpreter that unzips the source file before loading the script.

You mentioned Python. Python has PyOxidizer that can "compile" python scripts into a single binary executable. I'm not a Python user so I've never used it but you may want to take a look.

Javascript has several methods to package a binary. There's of course Electron made famous by VSCode. There's also nwjs. Of course, both of those are for GUI applications but for command line scripts there's pkg.

For Ruby there's Orca and AllInOneRuby. For Perl there's Packer. And for Tcl there's FreeWrap.

Answer 4

The closest things I could find on Windows were single-binary interpreters, and the ones I used were GNU Make and busybox-w32. Busybox's sh implementation was quite functional, reliable, and sufficient for a couple scripts I wrote, and along with the dated GnuWin32 standalone binaries I was able to accomplish what I needed.

Answer 5

If I were faced with a similar challenge, I'd reach for a language or runtime that can easily compile stand-alone binaries. For a more native (machine-level) language I'd try Go (GoLang). For scripting, I'd use JavaScript/TypeScript through Deno. Go can cross compile to many operating systems. And Deno has a deno compile command to bundle your scripts into a portable executable. Also, both languages have great standard libraries.

Answer 6

If your app is graphical, did you consider JavaScript?

You can serve in the cloud an "installation" webpage, then open it from your app with a query parameter = current installed version

• the page would do the HTTP request
• the page would prompt to update if the version is lower (ex. re-downloading the installer)

This is what LibreOffice do. The app query for update internally then redirect to a web page to download a new version.

There are several advantages:

• this page would double-down as an install page for new users
• you can track the activity of this page with analytics
• you can promote complimentary or new products in the future if needed
• you can ask for donations (like LibreOffice does) etc.

Of course this doesn't allow self-updating the app, but it may be enough depending on what you try to do and the maturity of your project.