Ok, I have to correct myself:
Compiling any C/C++ project on Windows is an absolute clusterfuck!
I've now almost spent more time trying to compile my program for Windows than writing the actual code for it - let that sink in!
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Whoop! It compiles now on Windows! 
You'll never guess what the #error was...
...on my Windows machine I had a file sync program running in the background, which apparently tripped up the compilation process (the program to compile was in a folder that had been under sync)!
Once I moved the program out of this folder, it all compiled fine!
Holy cow! 🤯
Unfortunately, my program doesn't seem to work on #Windows yet. It just gets stuck after passing audio to #Whisper. 😢
Hmm... 🤔
My suspicion why it's "not working" is:
Even though I do `cargo run --release` I've seen, during my investigation of the above compiling-fail-nightmare, that it puts artifacts into `Debug` folder.
So it might be that the program (Whisper.cpp to be precise) runs as a debug build and is just _terribly_ slow. 🐌
Oh boy, the struggle continues... 🤸
This might be related:
https://codeberg.org/tazz4843/whisper-rs/issues/226
A story about never ever giving up...❤️🔥
After several weeks, questioning my life choices, I've finally figured out why my #Whisper #SpeechToText system had been so slow on #Windows:
It was because apparently the #Rust-FFI wrapped #CPlusPlus code (Whisper.cpp) didn't compile with AVX and AVX2 enabled ( #SIMD!). I've tried it on two Windows machines (both AVX-capable). On one of the machines, with #Linux, it has successfully detected AVX/AVX2, though and has run fast.
1/?
So how have I found out about AVX not being detected? Well, it was actually quite easy (once you know where to look!):
During compile of Whisper.cpp, it shows detection of AVX/AVX2 in the log output.
You can see it here in their CI:
https://github.com/ggml-org/whisper.cpp/actions/runs/18441378587/job/52542245446#step:5:52
They have different CI jobs for compiling for Windows (MSYS2, MSVC) - interestingly, only the MSVC one shows the AVX log.
But I was using MSVC on my local Windows machines, where it failed to detect AVX.
So what to do now?
2/?
Well, sometimes you just need to literally _try stuff out_ to increase the probability of success!
Let's recap:
- two Windows machines: AVX not detected ❌
- one of the machines also a Linux machine (dual boot): AVX detected ✅
- CI runner on GitHub Actions with MSVC toolchain (Whisper.cpp): AVX detected ✅
#GitLab, where my project is hosted (soon will be open source 🤞), offers Windows CI runners (beta), so let's try that!
https://docs.gitlab.com/ci/runners/hosted_runners/windows/
🥁
3/?
And this finally worked!! :awesome:
The compilation has produced an .exe file with AVX/AVX2 enabled and it is finally usable on Windows (transcription speed _with_ AVX for two sentences: <7 secs; _without_ AVX: > 60 secs).
But after all this you might ask: we have solved the problem...but we still don't know why it failed to detect AVX in the other instances?
Unfortunately, I still don't know!
All I know is that "Reality has a surprising amount of detail":
http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail
4/4
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