4 ms·

I work in an industry where there's critical Windows-only software. Since WSL it's so much less painful since we can do everything except the specialist softwar

by nsteel 3y ago

I work in an industry where there's critical Windows-only software. Since WSL it's so much less painful since we can do everything except the specialist software under WSL (including git, SSH etc) and access the files seamlessly from both. I guess there is some unfortunate reason why they can't do the same here, it doesn't give specifics.

wwweston 3y ago
It's been about 4 years since I tried WSL (really hoping to replace macOS as a unix workstation with a robust commercial software market) but my file access and socketed-app experience then was definitely anything but seamless.
- nsteel 3y ago
  Presumably if only 4 years ago that would still have been WSL2, but they have done a lot of improvements over the years. The audio and graphics WSLg stuff is pretty cool. Maybe worth giving it another try.
- abwizz 3y ago
  not sure about your requirements, but pretty happy over here that nowadays i can just mount sshfs within wsl and access this from windows explorer without any special hacks.
jackewiehose 3y ago
> I guess there is some unfortunate reason why they can't do the same here Because they want to support Git for Windows which is built upon Cygwin/msys. And this is fine because Cygwin is much faster than WSL and a good Windows integration is so much easier. Would be a total PITA if Git would only be available through WSL. Cygwin is still the best thing ever happened to Windows (or to Linuxers who are forced to work with Windows).
- nsteel 3y ago
  > Because they want to support Git for Windows which is built upon Cygwin/msys I read that, but I was wondering why they wanted that because they don't say. I've never noticed git to be slow under WSL but I guess that very much depends on your repo size and exactly what you are doing. It all sounds like a tremendous amount of hassle otherwise. I agree, Cygwin did enable us to work productively for many years. But Cygwin's drive mounting modes caused lots of pain. And the Xserver is simply awful. It is/was a constant source of issues, the worst being the incredibly frustrating crashes. Maybe they were due to underlying issues in the applications themselves but those apps work fine under WSLg (of course there are other bugs but we can still work with those).
  - camtarn 3y ago
    Git is very slow under WSL2 when working with our medium-sized repos hosted on Windows filesystems (required by our Windows-only tooling). It's not unusable, but 'git status' under WSL1 was almost instant, whereas it takes a good few seconds under WSL2.
    - lathiat 3y ago
      It’s due to what is effectively a network file system. You have the same issue with nfs, 9pfs, parallels prl_fs, etc. It has to stat every file in the repo and that gets expensive on ang RPC protocol. Even local ones apparently. This is made worse because git uses the os-specific file statistics including inode number to track file changes. These change over most such file systems types which triggers it to rebuild the entire file cache every time you switch OS running git commands. Which if you have shell integration is constantly. I share my git repos between MacOS and a Linux volume and it hurts on any repo with 100s of thousands of files or more. Ceph, Linux kernel, etc.
      - nsteel 3y ago
        Turns out you guys are right. I tried a bigger repo and it was slow. I tried our large monorepo and it was utterly unusable (literally minutes for git status). I've found this thorough explanation https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-604592340 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-60...
msh 3y ago
WSL is only available in pro windows editions.
- Narishma 3y ago
  I don't know about WSL2 but WSL1 was also available in home editions.
- nsteel 3y ago
  Untrue. I use it with Windows 11 Home edition. > WSL 2 is available on all Desktop SKUs where WSL is available, including Windows 10 Home and Windows 11 Home. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq#wsl-2 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq#wsl-2

by nsteel 3y ago

wwweston 3y ago

It's been about 4 years since I tried WSL (really hoping to replace macOS as a unix workstation with a robust commercial software market) but my file access and socketed-app experience then was definitely anything but seamless.

nsteel 3y ago
Presumably if only 4 years ago that would still have been WSL2, but they have done a lot of improvements over the years. The audio and graphics WSLg stuff is pretty cool. Maybe worth giving it another try.
abwizz 3y ago
not sure about your requirements, but pretty happy over here that nowadays i can just mount sshfs within wsl and access this from windows explorer without any special hacks.

jackewiehose 3y ago

> I guess there is some unfortunate reason why they can't do the same here Because they want to support Git for Windows which is built upon Cygwin/msys. And this is fine because Cygwin is much faster than WSL and a good Windows integration is so much easier. Would be a total PITA if Git would only be available through WSL. Cygwin is still the best thing ever happened to Windows (or to Linuxers who are forced to work with Windows).

nsteel 3y ago
> Because they want to support Git for Windows which is built upon Cygwin/msys I read that, but I was wondering why they wanted that because they don't say. I've never noticed git to be slow under WSL but I guess that very much depends on your repo size and exactly what you are doing. It all sounds like a tremendous amount of hassle otherwise. I agree, Cygwin did enable us to work productively for many years. But Cygwin's drive mounting modes caused lots of pain. And the Xserver is simply awful. It is/was a constant source of issues, the worst being the incredibly frustrating crashes. Maybe they were due to underlying issues in the applications themselves but those apps work fine under WSLg (of course there are other bugs but we can still work with those).
- camtarn 3y ago
  Git is very slow under WSL2 when working with our medium-sized repos hosted on Windows filesystems (required by our Windows-only tooling). It's not unusable, but 'git status' under WSL1 was almost instant, whereas it takes a good few seconds under WSL2.
  - lathiat 3y ago
    It’s due to what is effectively a network file system. You have the same issue with nfs, 9pfs, parallels prl_fs, etc. It has to stat every file in the repo and that gets expensive on ang RPC protocol. Even local ones apparently. This is made worse because git uses the os-specific file statistics including inode number to track file changes. These change over most such file systems types which triggers it to rebuild the entire file cache every time you switch OS running git commands. Which if you have shell integration is constantly. I share my git repos between MacOS and a Linux volume and it hurts on any repo with 100s of thousands of files or more. Ceph, Linux kernel, etc.
    - nsteel 3y ago
      Turns out you guys are right. I tried a bigger repo and it was slow. I tried our large monorepo and it was utterly unusable (literally minutes for git status). I've found this thorough explanation https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-604592340 https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-60...

msh 3y ago

WSL is only available in pro windows editions.

Narishma 3y ago
I don't know about WSL2 but WSL1 was also available in home editions.
nsteel 3y ago
Untrue. I use it with Windows 11 Home edition. > WSL 2 is available on all Desktop SKUs where WSL is available, including Windows 10 Home and Windows 11 Home. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq#wsl-2 https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq#wsl-2