fix(desktop): extract Electron with PowerShell on Windows

[edemaine]

What Changed

Use Windows' built-in PowerShell Expand-Archive to extract Electron runtime archives on Windows. Paths are quoted with embedded apostrophes escaped, and extraction errors fail the installer. macOS and Linux behavior is unchanged.

Why

The Electron runtime repair script uses python3 on non-MacOS systems to extract downloaded archives. On Windows systems where that command resolves to the Microsoft Store alias, extraction fails with exit code 9009 and prevents pnpm dev:desktop from starting. This is a "nice to have" fix for Windows devs, so we don't need to install another Python or get it on our PATH. (I ran into it when trying to test #10542.)

Checklist

• This PR is small and focused
• I explained what changed and why
• I included before/after screenshots for any UI changes
• I included a video for animation/interaction changes

Note

Extract Windows Electron runtime using PowerShell instead of python3

The installElectronRuntime function in ensure-electron-runtime.mjs now uses PowerShell to extract the Electron archive on Windows, removing the python3 dependency. PowerShell runs without a profile or interactive input, and paths are escaped for single-quoted literals. Other platforms remain unchanged.

^{Macroscope summarized 36d2284.}

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Bug Fixes
  • Improved Windows desktop runtime setup with a more reliable archive extraction process.
  • Preserved platform-specific runtime extraction support for macOS and other supported platforms.
  • Improved handling of archive and destination paths during Windows setup to reduce extraction failures.

[macroscopeapp]

Approvability

Verdict: Approved at 36d2284

Macroscope's review found this PR approvable — This is a small, self-contained Windows startup fix that replaces the failing Python archive extraction path with built-in PowerShell while leaving macOS and other platforms unchanged. It does not modify product defaults or static-analysis configuration.

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The Electron runtime setup script now passes Windows archive paths through environment variables to PowerShell. macOS continues using ditto, and other platforms continue using python3.

Changes

Electron runtime extraction

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Windows archive extraction apps/desktop/scripts/ensure-electron-runtime.mjs	runChecked forwards an optional environment to spawnSync. Windows uses T3_ELECTRON_ARCHIVE and T3_ELECTRON_DESTINATION with PowerShell Expand-Archive instead of embedding paths in the command string.

Estimated code review effort: 2 (Simple) | ~10 minutes

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 0bc10

Windows desktop setup now uses PowerShell archive extraction instead of Python, allowing development startup where the Python Store alias is unavailable. No current merge-blocking risk is identified.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 3 functions across 1 files.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely identifies the primary change: using PowerShell to extract the Electron runtime on Windows.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description includes complete What Changed and Why sections, explains the Windows failure case, identifies unchanged platform behavior, and includes the checklist. The omitted UI Changes section i…
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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Actionable comments posted: 1

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Inline comments:
In `@apps/desktop/scripts/ensure-electron-runtime.mjs`:
- Line 134: Update the quote function used to build the PowerShell command so
Windows paths containing ASCII or Unicode PowerShell quotation marks, including
U+2019, are passed safely as data or escaped correctly. Add a Windows regression
test covering a path with U+2019 and verify Expand-Archive receives it intact.

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[juliusmarminge]

Note

This comment is posted by Julius' dot

The reported Windows setup failure is clear, but the PR and discussion do not report exercising the new PowerShell extraction or its result. The green CI jobs run on Ubuntu and do not check the changed Windows branch. The verification rule requires evidence for the changed behavior. Please document a focused Windows extraction check, including the environment, path handling and observed result, then request reconsideration.

[edemaine]

I confirm that I used this to successfully run T3 Code on my Windows 11 machine via pnpm dev:desktop. In my environment, I could not run pnpm dev:desktop without this change. Sorry if that wasn't clear before.

We also ran a focused extraction check on Windows using a ZIP archive and destination paths containing straight and curly apostrophes, curly double quotes, spaces, $, and brackets. PowerShell extraction succeeded, and the extracted file’s contents matched the original. The temporary test was removed to keep the patch minimal. I can add it if you'd like.

If you'd like a Windows CI job, let me know, but that seems like a bigger change.

@juliusmarminge please reconsider. (Let me know if there's a better way to request.)