For test coverage, we need executables that emit their path and their current working directory. For example, on Windows:

> .\print-dirs.bat
exepath: Z:\babashka\process\test-resources\print-dirs.bat
workdir: Z:\babashka\process\test-resources
> cd ..
>test-resources\print-dirs
exepath: Z:\babashka\process\test-resources\print-dirs.exe
workdir: Z:\babashka\process

This is straightforward for Linux/macOS .sh, Windows .cmd and Windows .bat variants, but for the Windows .exe variant, we need to create a binary.

It doesn't matter how print-dirs.exe is created; it won't need to be recreated often (we commit it to source control).

Since it generates relatively small binaries very quickly for any architecture, we've built a print-dirs.exe using Go. Source is in print-dirs.go

Presuming you have Go installed, from this dir:

GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -o print-dirs.exe print-dirs.go

For me, this generated a 1.9mb print-dirs.exe.

Since this .exe is checked into version control, I opted to create a smaller binary by adding the following -ldflags to strip debug info:

GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 go build -ldflags "-s -w" -o print-dirs.exe print-dirs.go

For me, the generated print-dirs.exe is now 1.3mb. To further shrink down the binary, you can use UPX (which is also cross-platform):

upx --ultra-brute print-dirs.exe

And now print-dirs.exe is 457kb.

If you don't want to install Go and UPX on your dev box but have docker installed, you can build from a docker image like so:

docker run --rm \
  -v "$PWD":/src \
  -w /src \
  devopsworks/golang-upx:latest \
  bash -c 'GOOS=windows GOARCH=amd64 \
    go build -ldflags "-s -w" -o print-dirs.exe print-dirs.go &&
    upx --ultra-brute print-dirs.exe'

This is ultimately the command I ran to create our Windows .exe.

These days, .com executables are rare.

I could not find an easy way to create one. Our tests use print-dirs.exe copied to print-dirs.com to support .com test cases.