What is redis?

Redis is a database that keeps all its data in memory rather than reading from disk on every request, which makes it very fast. It supports several data types beyond simple key-value pairs, including lists, sets, sorted sets, hashes, and streams. It is widely used for caching, session storage, real-time leaderboards, and message queuing in web applications. This repository is an unofficial port that makes Redis run natively on Windows. Redis was originally written for Linux and macOS, and the official project does not publish Windows builds. Microsoft's Open Tech team maintained a Windows port years ago, but that work was archived and is no longer updated. This fork picked up where that left off, merging the old Microsoft port with current Redis releases and fixing issues found through unit testing. The repository provides two stable branches: one targeting Redis 4.0.14 and one targeting Redis 5.0.14, both for 64-bit Windows. Pre-built installers are available on the releases page, so most users do not need to build from source. For those who do want to build, the project requires Visual Studio 2019, the Windows SDK 10, and Git Bash or Cygwin. The project depends on a customized version of the jemalloc memory allocator, which the maintainer also keeps in a separate repository. This is useful for developers who want to run Redis locally on a Windows machine for development or testing without setting up a Linux virtual machine or using a cloud-hosted Redis service. The README notes this is an unofficial port, not an official Redis product, and links to a wiki with more background on the history of the fork.