Running xspec-dev XSpec harnesses under Windows

[wendellpiez]

Prompted by #9.

The xspec-dev stuff is great but the bash dependency, at least, is an impediment on Windows. Saxon, XML Calabash and Maven all appear to work fine on Windows. MorganaXproc has presented no problems so far either.

Currently in a WIP branch there is an invocation of xspec-dev XSLT under make that appears to work using Windows Powershell's bash (Windows 10+), by calling Saxon under Maven directly. This is on a system with WSL installed.

It looks like this:

.PHONY: xspec-tests
xspec-tests: ## Run XSpecs found in tests folder
	mkdir -p $(output_folder)
	mvn --quiet \
   	-f "../common/pom.xml" \
   	exec:java \
   	-Dexec.mainClass="net.sf.saxon.Transform" \
   	-Dexec.args="-it:go -xsl:\"../xspec-dev/XSPEC-BATCH.xsl\" folder=random-util/tests"

However that is not in itself a full solution, if make-configured scripts in other folders error out, when run from the top, due to not finding resources.

Given the requirement for platform-neutrality, we need both technical and policy solutions here:

• A model for scripting or not-scripting we can use with confidence, portably, to orchestrate and run tests - does using make alone scale up?
• Guidelines/how-tos for devs to use this model including what to avoid

A radical approach might be to encourage scripting for convenience, but not permit calling scripts in the Makefiles, instead calling only Saxon and XML Calabash (or Morgana) with pipelines or parameterized arguments.

Considerations

This issue is a blocker for integrating xspec-dev into CI/CD - we don't wish to deploy CI/CD logic that can't also be run easily, off line.

Goals

Either a PR providing (steps toward) a solution, or follow-on Issues breaking this down, or both.