Nothing worked, and nothing said so

Description and use

The coordinator project now runs identically on macOS and Windows: encoding issues fixed with PYTHONUTF8=1, and a monorepo structure prevents conflicts.

Problem

On Windows the coordinator project’s hooks performed no action and produced no error messages, preventing repository synchronization.

Outcome

The coordinator project now runs identically on macOS and Windows, with hooks producing output, repositories synchronizing via git, and a monorepo structure preventing conflicts.

Workflow

• 1. Install Python 3.12 and Git for Windows via winget. 2. Add python3.exe to PATH to match Microsoft Store shortcut. 3. Set environment variable PYTHONUTF8=1 to enable UTF‑8 encoding. 4. Verify hooks now produce output and commit changes. 5. Merge session indices using git merge=union. 6. Refactor project into a monorepo with 11 projects, 4 products, and shared configuration. 7. Commit and push from both machines, ensuring numbering ranges and relative paths remain consistent.

Evidence

With winget I installed Python 3.12 and Git for Windows, and added a python3.exe copy to cover the Microsoft Store shortcut.

Source

Windows prints with cp1252, which doesn't have the arrow →, and my hooks used it.

Source

The fix was an environment variable, PYTHONUTF8=1, which is still in my global configuration today.

Source

The session index had 250 rows for 126 files; instead of regenerating it, I let git merge the two versions line by line with merge=union.

Source