Glossary

Glossary

primary container

The one container wip treats as "the app": the target of exec, run, build, shell, and every interaction. Named by container: under Container Mode, and by compose.service under Compose Mode / Compose Native Mode. It has no default — see Dependencies.

sidecar / dependency

Every other entry under dependencies: (or every other compose.yml service): a database, Redis, a queue worker. wip only ever starts and stops these; it never execs into them. See Dependencies.

interaction

A named project command declared in wip.yml, run as wip <name> [args...] — wip rspec, wip rails console. Spelled interaction: (the primary key, same as dip) or commands: (an alias). Declaring both is an error. See Interactions.

dispatch

The built-in that runs an interaction explicitly: wip dispatch NAME. Needed only when an interaction's name collides with a built-in command, since the built-in wins. See wip dispatch.

bind mount

A host directory shared into the container (.:/app). Under WSLC this always crosses a virtiofs boundary, which is what makes framework boot slow. See Fixing a Slow Boot.

sync volume

The named volume that holds a mirror of your source, so the running app reads from fast storage inside the VM instead of a bind mount. Defaults to <container>-src. See Source Sync.

mirror

One rsync pass from the read-only source mount into the sync volume. Run before boot by wip up, on demand by wip sync, and repeatedly by wip sync --watch. One-way, host → volume.

shadow context

A persistent copy of the build context kept on the Windows filesystem so wslc build doesn't have to read a WSL-side tree over the VM boundary on every build. Enabled per build command via shadow_context:. See Shadow Build Context.

staged context

The temporary directory wip build assembles by applying .dockerignore to the build context before handing it to wslc build. Distinct from a shadow context, which is persistent and Windows-side. See Dockerignore.

WslcContainerState

The integer wslc list --format json reports in each entry's State field:

Value	State	Meaning for wip
0	invalid	not a usable container
1	created	exists, never started
2	running	up
3	exited	the only state wip up --watch restarts
4	deleted	gone; needs wip up to recreate, not start

Unlike Docker there is no separate dead state. Reference: wsl.dev. See Restart Policies.

compose-for-wslc tool

A third-party binary that speaks Compose vocabulary against wslc. mode: compose bridges to one of these; wip doesn't bundle or favor any. See Third Party Compose Tools.

ConfigError

The error class raised for every configuration problem, at load time, naming the offending key. Catalog: Configuration Errors.