samhug/winenv

WinEnv

This project is a work in progress and I don't want to be responsible for what you do to your computer with it

Overview

This project has two primary components: the executor and the configuration library

• Executor

  • A small program written in Rust whose goal is to implement a minimal set of primitives for declarativly managing a Windows system.

• Configuration Library

  • A collection of expressions written in Dhall that can be composed to allow flexible and extensible declaration

• The files winenv-config/system-config.dhall and winenv-config/user-config.dhall contain the base expressions for the system and user environments

• The two powershell scripts in the project root system-exec.ps1 and user-exec.ps1 are the entrypoints for instantiating the system and user environments

  • These scripts will generate a context object containing information about the environment and save it to winenv-config/system-context.dhall or winenv-config/user-context.dhall
  • They will then run tools/wrapper-script.ps1 passing either winenv-config/system-config.dhall or winenv-config/user-config.dhall to be evaluated and instantiated

Challenges:

• Windows Registry
  • Registry values containing an array of bytes where different subsets of the array control distinct features (See for example)
    • Currently there is no declarative granularity smaller than the registry value as a whole

Aspects of Windows I want to manage declaratively:

• Computer Settings

  • Chocolaty packages
  • Install & configure Wireguard
  • Set computer scoped environment variables
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
  • Disable clipboard history
    • https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/how_to_disable_clipboard_history_in_windows_10.html
  • Scheduled tasks running as admin
    • Auto update chocolatey packages?

• User Settings

  • Set user scoped environment variables
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment
  • Set wallpaper
  • Set color theme
  • Windows Taskbar
    • Dock taskbar on right side
      • https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/57280-change-taskbar-location-screen-windows-10-a.html
    • Use small taskbar buttons
    • Pinned taskbar apps
      • https://4sysops.com/archives/configure-pinned-programs-on-the-windows-taskbar-with-group-policy/
    • Don't show contacts on the taskbar
    • Don't show search on the taskbar
  • Start Menu
    • Choose which folders appear on Start
      • Remove "Documents" & "Pictures"
  • Windows Terminal configuration
    • %LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\settings.json
  • VSCode config & extensions
    • %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json
  • Firefox config & extensions
  • Default Apps
    • Web Browser
  • Explorer settings
    • Show hidden files
    • Display extensions for known file types
    • Always use "Details" view
      • https://superuser.com/questions/253249/windows-registry-entries-for-default-explorer-view
    • Quick access links
  • AutoHotKey Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
    • Clipboard AutoTyper
  • Scheduled tasks running as user
    • Delete old Downloads
    • Facelog

---

Links & Reference Materials:

A mostly unorganized dumping ground —

• #dhall on StackOverflow

• IP Addresses in Dhall

  • dhall-lang/dhall-lang#217
  • https://github.com/duairc/dhall-ip-address
  • https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54579764/how-do-i-represent-a-tuple-in-dhall

• Powershell Desired State Configuration

  • https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/sysadmin/powershell/powershell-desired-state-configuration-the-basics/
  • https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/dsc/reference/resources/windows/registryresource?view=powershell-7
  • https://markgossa.blogspot.com/2017/08/learn-powershell-dsc-part-1.html
  • https://github.com/dsccommunity/ComputerManagementDsc

---

Inspired by NixOS, Home Manager, and PowerShell Desired State Configuration