Binary distribution for libmagic on Windows

[ahupp]

Windows users regularly run into issues with incompatible/broken or not found magic installations. Current issues:

#137
#288
#225
#276
#248
#87
#139
#233
#73
#60
#34

This task is to document/implement a more reliable solution for windows.

[jspraul]

python-magic-bin v0.4.14 was published in 2017. vcpkg can build libmagic v5.40 (circa 2021) with some tweaks for Windows.

• Download and install the Visual Studio 2017 Build Tools (link source)

  • On the left, select Windows > Visual C++ build tools
  • Then on the right, confirm Visual C++ tools for CMake is selected
    • (3.3GB+ download since Windows 10 SDK is a dependency 😢)

  

• Per https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg#quick-start-windows:

  • git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg
  • .\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
  • .\vcpkg\vcpkg install libmagic --triplet=x64-windows

• Under .\vcpkg\packages\libmagic_x64-windows (don't use mine) you'll find:

  • tools\libmagic\bin\magic-1.dll
    • python-magic loads libmagic.dll, you'll need to rename to this
  • tools\libmagic\bin\tre.dll
  • tools\libmagic\share\misc\magic.mgc

• Place these files in the current directory, on the path, or overwrite after pip puts python-magic-bin under \Lib\site-packages\magic\libmagic

  • (in the same directory as the script will only work if that is the current directory or on the path)

Related: hey-red/Mime#49 | https://github.com/hey-red/Libmagic-Build/tree/master/windows

Windows build is most problematic part of this