Cleanup the Windows instructions for using conda/pixi.

[clalancette]

This makes the instructions match what CI does in ros2/ci#802 . This relies on ros2/ros2#1642 being merged first.

[github-actions]

HTML artifacts: https://github.com/ros2/ros2_documentation/actions/runs/13164943814/artifacts/2543122460.

To view the resulting site:

1. Click on the above link to download the artifacts archive
2. Extract it
3. Open html-artifacts-4989/index.html in your favorite browser

[j-rivero]

Nice reduction in the number of steps required.

There are some references to chocolatey in the Troubleshooting and Contributing documents:

source/How-To-Guides/Installation-Troubleshooting.rst:We've seen that sometimes the chocolatey packages for ``asio``, ``tinyxml2``, etc. do not add important registry entries and CMake will be unable to find them when building ROS 2.
source/How-To-Guides/Installation-Troubleshooting.rst:We've not yet been able to identify the root cause, but uninstalling the chocolatey packages (with ``-n`` if the uninstall fails the first time), and then reinstalling them will fix the issue.
source/How-To-Guides/Installation-Troubleshooting.rst:- ``choco uninstall patch; colcon build --cmake-clean-cache`` - This is a bug in the `GNU Patch For Windows package <https://chocolatey.org/packages/patch>`_. If this package is not installed, the build process will instead use the version of Patch distributed with git.
source/The-ROS2-Project/Contributing/Windows-Tips-and-Tricks.rst:Unfortunately, the ``patch`` executable as delivered by chocolatey requires Administrator access to run.

Do we need to remove these ones?

[ros-discourse]

This pull request has been mentioned on ROS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.ros.org/t/upcoming-switch-of-windows-installation-to-pixi-conda/41916/1

[sloretz]

This is so much better!

Testing Windows Development Setup on a Windows 11 machine. I'm still waiting for colcon build --merge-install to complete because it's a very slow machine.

I also had to uninstall stuff previously installed for ROS 2. I don't think we need to include this in these pages, but posting in case someone else runs into this.

• choco uninstall all
• Had to manually delete a bunch of system environment variable entries so packages don't try to use uninstalled programs.

[sloretz]

When I first tried this, I got the following error:

irm : The remote name could not be resolved: 'aka.ms'
At line:1 char:1
+ irm https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vs_buildtools.exe -OutFile vs_buildt ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (System.Net.HttpWebRequest
   :HttpWebRequest) [Invoke-RestMethod], WebException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : WebCmdletWebResponseException,Microsoft.Powe
   rShell.Commands.InvokeRestMethodCommand

I resolved this by going to a web browser, typing aka.ms, and logging in to a microsoft account. After that this command worked.

[sloretz]

Suggested change

vs_buildtools_2019.exe --quiet --wait --norestart --add Microsoft.Component.MSBuild --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.6.1.TargetingPack --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.8.SDK --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TextTemplating --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CLI.Support --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Redist.14.Latest --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.19041 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.NativeDesktop.Core --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools

.\vs_buildtools_2019.exe --quiet --wait --norestart --add Microsoft.Component.MSBuild --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.6.1.TargetingPack --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.8.SDK --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TextTemplating --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CLI.Support --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Redist.14.Latest --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.19041 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.NativeDesktop.Core --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools

Need to start command with .\ or else I get the following error:

PS C:\Users\slore> vs_buildtools_2019.exe --quiet --wait --norestart --add Microsoft.Component.MSBuild --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.6.1.TargetingPack --add Microsoft.Net.Component.4.8.SDK --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.CoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Roslyn.Compiler --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.TextTemplating --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CLI.Support --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.CoreIde --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Redist.14.Latest --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Tools.x86.x64 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.Windows10SDK.19041 --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.ComponentGroup.NativeDesktop.Core --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.MSBuildTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools
vs_buildtools_2019.exe : The term 'vs_buildtools_2019.exe' is not
recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable
program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify
that the path is correct and try again.
At line:1 char:1
+ vs_buildtools_2019.exe --quiet --wait --norestart --add Microsoft.Com ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (vs_buildtools_2019.exe:Stri
   ng) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException
 
 
Suggestion [3,General]: The command vs_buildtools_2019.exe was not found, but does exist in the current location. Windows PowerShell does not load commands from the current location by default. If you trust this command, instead type: ".\vs_buildtools_2019.exe". See "get-help about_Command_Precedence" for more details.

[sloretz]

Does REPOS_FILE_BRANCH get populated in the docs? I copied this from the github render, so I had to change this to rolling manually.

[sloretz]

I had to close and reopen powershell before this command worked. I think it's necessary because pixi isn't on PATH in the current shell after installing it.

PS C:\dev> pixi install
pixi : The term 'pixi' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet,
function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the
name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try
again.
At line:1 char:1
+ pixi install
+ ~~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: (pixi:String) [], CommandNot
   FoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException