W

windevbox

by dbosoft

Windows Developer Box

Pre-configured Windows development environments with common developer tools and configurations for Windows 10 and Windows 11.

OverviewAll Tags

Windows Developer Box

This geneset provides pre-configured Windows development environments with common developer tools and configurations for Windows 10 and Windows 11 Enterprise editions.

Available Tags

win10

Windows 10 Enterprise development environment based on Windows 10 20H2 Enterprise.

win11

Windows 11 Enterprise development environment based on Windows 11 24H2 Enterprise.

Important Note

This geneset represents an edge case for catlets configured purely via configuration from a base catlet. Due to the long installation time (typically 20-40 minutes, potentially longer with customizations), it is strongly recommended to repack this catlet after build into a custom base-catlet for reuse. This avoids repeated lengthy installation processes for each deployment.

What's installed

  • winget, plus the command line tools from the dev_tools variable (default Git.Git,OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS,GitHub.cli), installed machine-wide
  • a trusted Dev Drive on E: (devdrive_letter): a dynamically expanding 100 GB VHDX on C: (devdrive_size), with package caches and a \source workspace
  • Hyper-V (nested virtualization)
  • PowerShell 7
  • VS Code; the extensions from vscode_extensions are installed for each user at first logon
  • Visual Studio 2026 (vs_edition, vs_workloads) with its package cache on the Dev Drive
  • system-wide Git configuration, and the Git identity from git_user_name / git_user_email for each user at first logon

The catlet has 8 vCPUs, 16 GB memory and a 250 GB (dynamically expanding) system disk.

To put the Dev Drive on a dedicated disk instead, add the disk and set devdrive_disk (if that disk is missing or not empty, the Dev Drive falls back to the VHDX on C:):

drives:
 - name: sdb
   size: 100
variables:
 - name: devdrive_disk
   value: sdb

Windows Terminal is not installed: Windows 11 already ships it, and winget can't install it for all users.

Usage

This catlet does not include a default user.
You should therefore set up your own fodder to create an initial local user or to automatically join a domain.

Alternatively, you can add the starter-food fodder gene, which creates a default admin user with an initial password of "InitialPassw0rd".

name: my-devbox
parent: dbosoft/windevbox/win11

fodder:
  - source: gene:dbosoft/starter-food:win-starter

Or using PowerShell with inline YAML:

@"
name: my-devbox  
parent: dbosoft/windevbox/win11


fodder:
  - source: gene:dbosoft/starter-food:win-starter
"@ | New-Catlet

See also starter-food for other defaults and variables for starter food.

 

Windows license

All base catlets from dbosoft contain no valid windows license and are build using a evaluation image.
For details see base catlets documentation how to change license and to rearm while evaluating.

Versioning

This geneset contains only fodder genes and is versioned with a major-minor version scheme.

There is no patch version - when a bug is fixed, a new minor version will be released.
A new major version is released when a gene is removed from the geneset.

The tag latest is updated with each released version. If you want to have a stable reference, don't use the latest tag, use a specific version tag.

Contributing

This geneset is maintained by dbosoft and is open for contributions.

You can find the repository for this geneset on github.com/dbosoft/eryph-genes.

License

All public dbosoft genesets are licensed under the MIT License.