Windows: bisync fails with FileNotFoundError when rclone not installed #426

Problem

On Windows, running bm project bisync fails with a cryptic error when rclone is not installed:

Error: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

The Basic Memory installer works correctly, but the bisync (and other rclone-dependent) commands fail because rclone is not automatically installed as a dependency.

Root Cause

The rclone commands in src/basic_memory/cli/commands/cloud/rclone_commands.py directly call subprocess.run(['rclone', ...]) without checking if rclone is installed first.

When rclone is missing, subprocess.run raises:

• FileNotFoundError on Unix systems
• [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified on Windows

Expected Behavior

Users should get a helpful error message directing them to install rclone:

Error: rclone is not installed
Please run: bm cloud setup
Or install manually from: https://rclone.org/downloads/

Affected Commands

All commands that use rclone:

• bm project bisync
• bm project sync
• bm project check
• bm project ls

Solution

1. Add rclone check before executing any rclone command
2. Provide helpful error message with installation instructions
3. Improve Windows installation error message if no package managers available

Related

• bm cloud setup does install rclone, but users might not run it first
• Windows installation requires winget, chocolatey, or scoop