I see the fabric binaries are released not just for linux but for windows as well. Does that mean HLF network can be set up via windows HLF binaries exclusively? (That is, without Docker)
https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric contains releases built for Windows platform, but https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-samples does not. I wonder if there is a straightforward way of building test Hyperledger Fabric network using Windows system only.
It is technically possible as I have done it but it is definitely not straight forward. Also the code is not tested on windows at all so when I did do it I encountered issues in the code which I had to fix. These did make it into the code base but as it was a while ago. More issues wrt Windows could now exist.
Just to be clear; even though Windows binaries are built and published they are never tested and so they might not even work and your best path would be to fix the source yourself and submit a PR if you encounter any issues. Do not use the solution in production. Linux is the only platform recommended for production and IMO running fabric natively on Windows is nothing more than an interesting exercise.
To avoid using Docker you will need to either use Chaincode as a Service or write your own external builder which can run natively on windows.
I've also remembered that on Windows the code that interacts with the file system (eg for writing blocks) may not have the same reliability checks in place as those for linux which is one very good reason to not use the windows version for production.