We kind of do something along those lines with some added layers. I have VirtualBox installed on a windows laptop. I then have an Ubuntu WSL 2 that I run through Terminal/bash. I then have a tool called Vagrant installed on Windows and WSL where I can spin up and destroy various dev environments through the VagrantFile, some additional provisioning through Ansible to have basics like java, npm, etc already installed, and then using the VirtualBox WSL2 plugin https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant https://developer.hashicorp.com/vagrant/docs/other/wsl https://github.com/Karandash8/virtualbox_WSL2
Your box can be anything, used to use Centos6/7, but now use Rocky9. I then ssh into them using vagrant ssh and complete anything I need to do as you would any other VM. I just clone repos down and can build right from there on my provisioned box. If my dev environment ever acts up, I just destroy it and spin up a new one. Some people store their repos just in the home directory which is lost on destroy, but others will use /vagrant directory which is a shared folder between it and the host so they can use an IDE and still build through the box and have it backed up somewhere. You can use the Windows Remote Development extension pack to allow you to have some GUI apps to develop from the vagrant box or WSL just typing `code .` for example here is how you would use vscode. You can also use VcXsrv Windows X as an alternative. There are other apps available now as well. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/wsl-vscode https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.vscode-remote-extensionpack It's a bit of setup and moving parts, but once its setup, its fairly efficient and easy to get into and start working. This is also just one aspect of each of these tools and there's plenty to expand upon and fine tune to your own needs and customizations. I think the need for vagrant may or may not still be there as WSL improves with remote development, but it's nice to be able to quickly destroy and spin back to a known state and not fight with your WSL instance. I have not looked into these, but there is something similar you can do now with dev docker containers that looks really cool. https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/devcontainers/containers https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/wsl#_advanced-opening-a-wsl-2-folder-in-a-container Another way would be through a Linux VDI through something like VMware Horizons, so that may be something you'd want to bring up with your IT department as an option, but there is cost and you may also get the added need of a VPN when remote. -----Original Message----- From: Mike Beckerle <mbecke...@apache.org> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 2:22 PM To: dev@daffodil.apache.org Subject: WSL for linux on Windows? Is anyone doing development using WSL or WSL2 linux support? If so what is your experience with it? positive, negative,.... does it work reliably? I have been having lots of freeze-ups using VMWare Workstation running Ubuntu guest on windows host, and I'm starting to get pessimistic about VMWare Workstation long term. I'd run Linux natively, but my employer requires that we use managed laptops, but we can use Virtual Machines on them for development. Mike Beckerle Apache Daffodil PMC | daffodil.apache.org OGF DFDL Workgroup Co-Chair | http://www.ogf.org/ogf/doku.php/standards/dfdl/dfdl Owl Cyber Defense | http://www.owlcyberdefense.com/
