Alternatives to pywinrm?

[jxn]

I've just started a project that depends on pywinrm, and it's work well, other than the encoding issues I've run into issues described in many of the open issues and merge requests (e.g. #222 ).

It seems like the PR's and development is stagnating. Is there a fork or a similar project which is more active that I should depend on instead?

[jborean93]

There isn't an official fork of pywinrm that I'm aware of but I'm sure some people keep a fork of their own to get what they need working. IMO pywinrm works for what most people need but definitely has a few issues. The majority of the base winrm features are in pywinrm and the rest are probably a bit more complex and relatively uneeded.

In the end I decided to work on my own winrm/psrp library https://github.com/jborean93/pypsrp which does the same things in pywinrm plus a few extra features. There's also a Python 3.5+ library https://github.com/cournape/aio-winrm that also does plain winrm over async APIs so might be able to scale better when dealing with a large number of parallel hosts but I've never really played with it. This does seem pretty bare in features but I think someone has forked it to include a few more stuff i just can't find the link right now.

[agowa]

I always encountered problems with pywinrm, mostly security and environment related issues.
That's why I switched to using ssh instead of winrm. You can find the implementation from Microsoft at: https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable
There is also one that ships with windows, as an optional dependency, but that one does not seam to get updated and is way behind.
Install Instructions: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Install-Win32-OpenSSH
Alternatively you could also use the official Chocolatey Package: https://chocolatey.org/packages/openssh
And just a hint, if you're doing the switch, your sshd_conf is not within the program files directory, but at: %programdata%\ssh\sshd_config

[badcure]

There isn't an official fork of pywinrm that I'm aware of but I'm sure some people keep a fork of their own to get what they need working. IMO pywinrm works for what most people need but definitely has a few issues. The majority of the base winrm features are in pywinrm and the rest are probably a bit more complex and relatively uneeded.

I would actually disagree with this. Work is still being done by a select few while other requests go to the wayside. #132 is a good example of where if it is used for a continuously up application, there isn't a way to release the TCP connections directly. It has been open for over 2 years. IMO it is fairly simple and needed(too many open files?), and I am not alone looking at other PRs.

I have no problem with forks, such as disagreements with the direction. I usually like the opportunity to work with a community first if there is a need somewhere. It is sort of sad a visible project such as this is extremely hard to even get feedback or help assist, and forking is the only option.

[badcure]

Just to show what I am seeing. Here are some PRs I think are valid or at least a comment is warranted for being open for 1 1/2 years at minimum:
#55 - Real time I/O would be nice
#174 - Handling connection refused within requests would be nice.
#196 - Ability to specify a proxy.

And even this, asking when the next release will be: #253 Looks like the last one was in Dec 2017, which was well after my PR above.

[badcure]

@jxn I will be closing out this issue if you don't mind.

I believed I commented on one of your PRs, but feel free to tag me on anything that you would like visibility on. I plan on reviewing more PRs/issues in the coming days.