Certbot Discontinuing Windows Beta Support in 2024

[zoracon]

February 2024 will be our last release for the Windows Installer.

Why

The level of Windows support for Certbot varies depending on the core team's capacity to enhance and rectify issues with the Windows installer. Presently, Windows support is classified as Beta. This designation allows us the flexibility to deliberate on whether to sustain support long term, given the current resource constraints.

Decision Drivers

If we chose to maintain support for the Windows installer, we would be providing an installer with issues that may take significant time to address on the core team.

Off Ramps for Windows Users

We understand that it could be cumbersome to switch certificate management software. Below are options that are already highly popular for Windows users utilizing Let's Encrypt certificates. All options in most cases support automatically configuring the web server.

Options:

1. Certify Certificate Manager
2. win-acme
3. WLS2 with the Certbot Snap distribution. With systemd officially supported in WSL2. This is also a possible route now.

Possible Concerns

What happens to users that currently use the Windows installer?

All alternative options in most cases support automatically configuring the web server. And if manually configured, users would need to obtain certificates using the new ACME software and then update paths in their web server configuration to the new certificates rather than the certificates managed by Certbot.

Lastly, thank you to those in the community who did work on the Windows installer in any capacity.

[webprofusion]

For those with powershell skills looking to write custom tasks to automate renewals also check out Posh-ACME: https://poshac.me

For those currently using certbot specifically for apache or nginx on Windows (or other services using PEM files for the certificate components) Certify The Web - Certify Certificate Manager, which I develop, has a guide here: Using with Apache, nginx or Other Web Servers | Certify The Web Docs

[win-acme also have an Apache guide here: win-acme]

[linkp]

@webprofusion

for apache

@webprofusion

on Windows

mod_md is also an option.

[Osiris]

@zoracon Can users use pip on Windows to install Certbot by any chance?

[orangepizza]

will windows relate codes (iis install etc) be removed from certbot code?

[webprofusion]

Certbot doesn't have an IIS install, or PFX build etc. It does have some things like calling powershell to invoke hooks, win32 file ACL permissioning etc but they're only a relatively small part of the codebase.

[zoracon]

Using pip with WSL2 to install Certbot on Windows should work, but native Windows support outside of WSL2 will be removed.

[Osiris]

OK, good to know that's out of the question too