GNU nano 9.2 for Windows — Portable Builds (32/64-bit)

Portable builds of the GNU nano 9.2 text editor for Windows, compiled from the sources in this repository with minimal Windows-specific fixes.

License: GNU General Public License, version 3.0 (see COPYING in this directory and in each build folder).

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Ready-made portable versions

Folder	Architecture	File
nano-9.2-win64/	64-bit (x86_64)	nano.exe
nano-9.2-win32/	32-bit (i686)	nano.exe

Contents of each folder:

nano.exe    — the editor itself (statically linked, stripped)
nano.bat    — launcher: runs nano with HOME pointing at this folder
.nanorc     — configuration (settings + syntax highlighting includes)
syntax/     — 44 syntax highlighting files (*.nanorc)
COPYING     — full text of the GPL v3 license

DLL libraries

No extra DLLs are required. The binaries are statically linked: ncurses (wide-char, with the built-in Windows console driver win32con), the compiler runtime, and all other dependencies are built into nano.exe.

nano.exe only uses system DLLs of Windows that ship with the OS:

• api-ms-win-crt-*.dll (UCRT — built into Windows 10/11)
• KERNEL32.dll, USER32.dll, bcrypt.dll

So there is nothing else to copy next to the executable — that is the advantage of a static portable build.

System requirements

• Windows 10 or Windows 11 (UCRT required, included in the system).
• The 32-bit version works on any x86/x64 Windows 10+; the 64-bit version requires x64.

Usage

Option 1 — via the launcher (recommended: enables syntax highlighting):

portable\nano-9.2-win64\nano.bat myfile.txt

Option 2 — directly:

portable\nano-9.2-win64\nano.exe myfile.txt

When run directly, nano takes its settings from %USERPROFILE%\.nanorc if it exists. The nano.bat launcher instead sets HOME to the folder containing nano.exe, so the local .nanorc and syntax/ are used.

File association: you can drag a file from Explorer onto nano.bat.

Features

The full nano feature set: editing, cutbuffer, search/replace, syntax highlighting, built-in file browser (M-G), UTF-8 support, mouse, multiple buffers, history, macros, lock files, and more.

Notes for this build:

• UTF-8 — enabled (ncursesw with wide-char support).
• Formatter (M-F) — works: runs an external program via spawnvp() (see the patch in text.c).
• Speller/linter pipeline (M-S) — disabled: they need fork()+pipes, which do not exist on native Windows. Interactive spell-checking of marked text through an external word editor works.
• NLS (translations) — disabled (no libintl in this build).

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Changes made to the nano sources (for Windows)

All modifications were made under the GPL; the files remain GPL-compatible:

1. src/browser.c — read_the_list() rewritten as a single pass. Reason: gnulib on Windows replaces DIR with an opaque struct gl_module but does not provide a compatible rewinddir(), so the old code did not compile.
2. src/files.c — backup timestamps are taken from st_atime/st_mtime (the st_atim/st_mtim fields do not exist on mingw).
3. src/text.c — same for st_mtim; added a Windows implementation of treat() using _spawnvp(_P_WAIT, …) (formatter and interactive spell-checker); #include <process.h>.
4. src/utils.c — get_homedir(): if HOME is not set, USERPROFILE is used (the standard profile on Windows).

Additionally, patches were applied to ncurses 6.5 at build time (MIT license, not shipped in the portable folders, only statically linked): disabling the obsolete wcrtomb workaround for UCRT and fixing MKfallback.sh for empty Windows command-line arguments.

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Rebuilding from sources (brief)

Toolchain: llvm-mingw (clang/UCRT, includes busybox with sh and GNU make) + ncurses 6.5 sources.

1. Build ncursesw (static) twice — for x86_64-w64-mingw32 and i686-w64-mingw32:

   ../ncurses-6.5/configure --build=<triple> --host=<triple> \
     --prefix=<prefix> --with-shared --with-normal \
     --without-cxx --without-ada --without-manpage \
     --without-tests --without-progs \
     --enable-term-driver --enable-interop --enable-ext-mouse \
     CC=<triple>-clang AR=<triple>-ar RANLIB=<triple>-ranlib
   make -j1 && make install

2. Configure nano (example for x64):

   srcdir/configure --build=x86_64-w64-mingw32 --host=x86_64-w64-mingw32 \
     --disable-nls --enable-utf8 --enable-nanorc --enable-color \
     --enable-multibuffer --enable-browser --enable-help \
     --enable-comment --enable-extra --enable-formatter --disable-speller \
     CC=x86_64-w64-mingw32-clang \
     CPPFLAGS="-DNCURSES_STATIC -I<prefix>/include/ncursesw" \
     LDFLAGS="-L<dir-with-libncursesw.a> -L<prefix>/lib"
   make -C lib && make -C src

   Key points:

   • -DNCURSES_STATIC — otherwise the ncurses headers expect dllimport, while the library is static;
   • a directory containing only a copy of libncursesw.a listed first in LDFLAGS (-L…) forces the linker to pick the static version instead of .dll.a;
   • the doc directory is skipped (no makeinfo).

3. strip the binary, place it into portable/…, and add .nanorc, nano.bat, syntax/, COPYING.

Build quirks on a plain Windows system without MSYS2:

• configure looks for grep/sed/awk without the .exe extension — so pass GREP=grep SED=sed AWK=awk to configure;
• --build=… is required (config.guess does not recognize plain Windows);
• SHELL points to busybox sh;
• ncurses is built with -j1 (parallel builds misbehave on Windows).

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License

GNU nano is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3.0 or later — see COPYING. The modified nano sources are in this repository (src/browser.c, src/files.c, src/text.c, src/utils.c).

ncurses 6.5 is licensed under the MIT license (statically linked into nano.exe).

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.