Explore support for developing on WSL

[kieferrm]

WSL allows you to run linux program on Windows. We are looking into providing support for working with WSL when Code runs on Windows. This is related to #29194.

Other related items are:

• Git: Support WSL #9502
• Support launching VS Code from Bash on Ubuntu on Windows #13138
• Run ts server using ubuntu bash (WSL) #20220
• Optionally Run Language Servers/Extensions using Windows Subsystem for Linux #22663
• Feature request: WSL remote interpreters for extensions developers #28667
• Globally WSL support #50795

Here is the query of all open issues labeled with WSL: query

[jsynowiec]

Just a heads-up, for reference, most JetBrains IDEs now support WSL interpreters without the remote-interpreter-over-ssh workaround. It's available in PyCharm 2018.3, RubyMine 2017.3, WebStorm 2018.2.

[uishon]

Just a heads-up, for reference, most JetBrains IDEs now support WSL interpreters without the remote-interpreter-over-ssh workaround. It's available in PyCharm 2018.3, RubyMine 2017.3, WebStorm 2018.2.

As for JetBrains IDEs, it's true and nice but as for Python (PyCharm), virtualenvs are not supported so at least for me, this makes this feature useless. Unfortunately.

[helioascorreia]

Yes, a totally agree with uishon. Vscode is from windows and now the python package too (and the top downloaded package). I think they should focus more on getting the best integration between vscode, python and WSL.
When I'm doing Django development on windows, I need to use wsl because I got some bugs on translations and channels for example. If I use that, I can't set the python linter for vscode.
The fix I needed to do was have two virtualenvs, one for windows and another to WSL.

[offero]

Does debugging through docker work on Windows?

[benc-uk]

Oh god yes!
I need this. The integration today is non-existent, and actually causes a lot of problems (e.g. multiple git commits).

Support for WSL git as the main source control, but also critical for language extensions (Node, Dotnet, Python, Go).
The lack of support currently means I have to have SDKs for all languages installed under both Windows and WSL

Also tasks and debug also need to be aware of WSL, with path translations and locating binaries. Trying to get a set of clean launch configs that work on any developer's system is impossible

[samirbr]

A simple suggestion: the integration should be simple as reference WSL commands and paths using a WSL schema: wsl://<path>.
Example:

wsl://usr/bin/python

[offero]

A simple suggestion: the integration should be simple as reference WSL commands and paths using a WSL schema: wsl://<path>.
Example:

wsl://usr/bin/python

That seems very useful. One caveat is that people may have multiple WSL environments installed, so there should be a way to set which one should be used.

[bardware]

people may have multiple WSL environments installed

You call wsl.exe and get one wsl environment. Every other Linux has to be started by bash.exe or something.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config

[samirbr]

A simple suggestion: the integration should be simple as reference WSL commands and paths using a WSL schema: wsl://<path>.
Example:

wsl://usr/bin/python

That seems very useful. One caveat is that people may have multiple WSL environments installed, so there should be a way to set which one should be used.

Maybe use wsl+<environment>://<path>.
Example:

wsl+ubuntu://usr/bin/python

[benc-uk]

The wsl:// schema idea is a neat idea, but I don't know if the integration needs to go deeper? E.g. The major language extensions (Python, Go, Node, C#) need to be aware of WSL too

[clouds56]

Also the filenames and project folder would need transform before passing into wsl
e.g. C:\your\workspace -> /mnt/c/your/workspace
when using wsl:// schema

[benc-uk]

Shame that every month this moves out another month. I wouldn't mind but some news on progress, what is being worked on/investigated would give us WSL users some hope! 😁

[dscho]

Have you gentle people seen this announcement about the next Windows feature update and \\wsl$? I think this might neatly solve the problem, but of course, I do not have that Windows version yet, so I can't say for sure.

[kavdev]

@dscho Thanks for the heads up on that. Pretty cool, but it only enables you to interact with wsl files. There still needs to be more work on having the vscode instance be able to work with linux binaries, unless I'm missing something.

I tried setting git.path to \\wsl$\Ubuntu\usr\bin\git (technically \\\\wsl$\\Ubuntu\\usr\\bin\\git in settings.json) to no avail

[dscho]

I tried setting git.path to \\wsl$\Ubuntu\usr\bin\git

Why not using wsl git?

C:\>wsl git version
git version 2.7.4

[kavdev]

Why not using wsl git?

@dscho I was just using the git executable as an example. I appreciate the willingness to help, but I want to avoid taking this thread off-topic; see #9502 on why that solution doesn't work

[Yablon]

Oh I think the wsl based vscode is really needed. If the wsl python interpreter and remote python interpreter(I don't know if this will be surpported) is surpported in vscode, I will change my IDE from Pycharm to VsCode.

[kowalski7cc]

A simple suggestion: the integration should be simple as reference WSL commands and paths using a WSL schema: wsl://<path>.
Example:

wsl://usr/bin/python

That seems very useful. One caveat is that people may have multiple WSL environments installed, so there should be a way to set which one should be used.

Maybe use wsl+<environment>://<path>.
Example:

wsl+ubuntu://usr/bin/python

I think it would be better a thing like wsl://ubuntu/ or wsl-distro://ubuntu/ and wsl:// referring to default distro

[Tyriar]

We just announced remote development with VS Code, check out the blog post for details https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2019/05/02/remote-development