Use WSL go environment for tools

[srfrog]

I would like to have my environment set in WSL (bash.exe) and not in Windows, can vscode-go exec bash.exe before running the tools (golint, goreturns, etc) ?

I have the following settings but doesn't appear to work:

    "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\WINDOWS\\sysnative\\bash.exe",
    "terminal.external.windowsExec": "C:\\WINDOWS\\sysnative\\bash.exe",
    "go.goroot": "/usr/local/go"

vscode alerts with:

Cannot find \usr\local\go\bin\go.exe

[ramya-rao-a]

Can you try pointing your PATH to /usr/local/go/bin/ and restart VS Code?

[srfrog]

Can you be more specific? Set PATH where, WSL or Windows? I have /usr/local/go/bin in ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile, no luck.

From cmd.exe when I run bash -c 'echo $PATH', I don't see my /usr/local/go/bin in PATH. So perhaps bash.exe ignores .bashrc and .profile initially. Any ideas?

[ramya-rao-a]

Taking a step back, you are on Windows and you have set the go.goroot to be /usr/local/go which doesn't look like a valid path in Windows.

go.goroot should be point to the path where you have the Go executable.

Next, about your ask

I would like to have my environment set in WSL (bash.exe) and not in Windows

Sorry, but I don't understand what exactly you are trying to do here.
Are you saying that you want to use bash in the integrated terminal?

cc @tylerb for terminal related queries

[tylerstillwater]

.bashrc should be executed for non interactive shells, which would mean your path should be set correctly. If not, then you need to debug if/why .bashrc is not being executed. I don't know anything about bash in windows, so I'd recommend googling around a bit.

[srfrog]

@ramya-rao-a I thought that by changing terminal.integrated.shell.windows and terminal.external.windowsExec to use bash.exe (Windows Subsystem for Linux) it would allow vscode-go to use the go tools in the lxss environment. This feature would be ideal for people that are leaving macOS for Windows+WSL.

Perhaps this is a setting in electron/nodejs. I'll do some more digging.

[ramya-rao-a]

Oh sorry @tylerb, I meant to cc @Tyriar (our resident terminal and linux expert), did a premature auto-complete and your name got entered :)

@srfrog ah! I think I am following what you are trying to do a little better. You are referring to the usage of go tools (like formatting using gofmt/goimports/goreturns, renaming using gorename` etc) and want them to run in WSL instead of Windows.

Currently, we use simple child_process in the Go extension to run the Go tools. How WSL plays into this, I don't know.

@Tyriar thoughts?

[srfrog]

@ramya-rao-a vscode-go is using child_process.execFile() which is why the shell settings aren't used. Additionally, path.getGoRuntimePath() is hard-coded to C:\Go\bin\go.exe on windows, so it will never detect Go in WSL. I will play around with these, most likely a new setting for WSL is needed that makes use of child_process.exec() and checks for the setting value in getGoRuntimePath().

e.g., go.useWSL = true || false

The actual command string might look like:

cmd.exe /d /s /c bash.exe -ic '{command}'

Unfortunately, NodeJS is hard-coded to use cmd.exe /d /s /c {command} on windows 😞

[ramya-rao-a]

@srfrog

Regarding the go runtime path

path.getGoRuntimePath() first tries to find the go binary/executable as per the path in go.goroot first and then the PATH. If not found, then it tries C:\Go\bin\go.exe on windows and /usr/local/go/bin/go on other platforms.

In your case, looks like it says "\usr\local\go\bin\go.exe" which is weird to me because it is looking for an "exe" in a non Windows like path. I'd suggest to get a local environment of the Go extension set up and debug to see how exactly are you ending up with this scenario. Instructions: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-go/wiki/Building,-Debugging-and-Sideloading-the-extension-in-Visual-Studio-Code

Regarding shell usage

So are you saying that if we use child_process.exec and pass the shell option, you should be able to get the expected behavior?

[Tyriar]

This was brought up for the git support recently, not sure what the result of that conversation was yet.

The actual command string might look like:

cmd.exe /d /s /c bash.exe -ic '{command}'

Does adding bash.exe -ic work? Seems like a pretty good solution to me, if this is the direction the Go extension goes, @ramya-rao-a will probably need to make sure all paths are mapped to and from the /mnt/c/... and C:\... formats correctly.

In your case, looks like it says "\usr\local\go\bin\go.exe" which is weird to me because it is looking for an "exe" in a non Windows like path.

What's probably happening here is it's assuming go.goroot is a standard Windows style path and transforming it so:

/usr/local/go
\usr\local\go
\usr\local\go\bin\go.exe (look in the bin\ for go.exe)

[dibiasefrn]

Does adding bash.exe -ic work? Seems like a pretty good solution to me, if this is the direction the Go extension goes, @ramya-rao-a will probably need to make sure all paths are mapped to and from the /mnt/c/... and C:\... formats correctly.

I've done just that in my (somewhat messy) fork and, bare a few remaining bugs, it works! But it's considerably slower than native tools. :( Any ideas for speeding it up?

In case you're interested in trying it out, here's an example of what you need to add to the vscode settings.json:

"go.useWsl": true,
"go.goroot": "/mnt/c/local/go",
"go.gopath": "/mnt/c/go",

[tiagommferreira]

Any updates on this? WSL integration would be really useful.

[postgrep]

I think an option to choose to either use the Windows environment or the WSL environment should be provided direcly by the editor, not by each plugin.

Other language plugins for VScode for Windows have this issue too.
https://github.com/DonJayamanne/pythonVSCode/issues/534

I think the following issue in vscode itself relates to this one.
microsoft/vscode#22663

I would prefer a global option in the editor itself.

[gdrte]

Integration with WSL is highly preferable for users like me, who just moved from Mac OS X to Windows X :).

[radu-matei]

I think the C++ tools for VS Code on Windows make use of WSL (I haven't used yet, this is only based on their docs).

It would be great to have the same for Go.

[ramya-rao-a]

Hello all,

There is no update as of yet. There is some talks to better support WSL in general in VS Code. When these talks solidify a bit, I'll see how we can bring over such support to the Go extension.