Book Image

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

By : Stuart Leeks
Book Image

Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) Tips, Tricks, and Techniques

By: Stuart Leeks

Overview of this book

Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) allows you to run native Linux tools alongside traditional Windows applications. Whether you’re developing applications across multiple operating systems or looking to add more tools to your Windows environment, WSL offers endless possibilities. You’ll start by understanding what WSL is and learn how to install and configure WSL along with different Linux distros. Next, you'll learn techniques that allow you to work across both Windows and Linux environments. You’ll discover how to install and customize the new Windows Terminal. We'll also show you how to work with code in WSL using Visual Studio Code (VS Code). In addition to this, you’ll explore how to work with containers with Docker and Kubernetes, and how to containerize a development environment using VS Code. While Microsoft has announced support for GPU and GUI applications in an upcoming release of WSL, at the time of writing these features are either not available or only in early preview releases. This book focuses on the stable, released features of WSL and giving you a solid understanding of the amazing techniques that you can use with WSL today. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to configure WSL and Windows Terminal to suit your preferences, and productively use Visual Studio Code for developing applications with WSL.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction, Installation, and Configuration
5
Section 2:Windows and Linux – A Winning Combination
11
Section 3: Developing with the Windows Subsystem for Linux

Working with Git

Without a doubt, Git is a commonly used source control system. Originally written by Linus Torvalds to use for Linux kernel source code, it is now widely used, including by companies such as Microsoft, where it is used extensively, including for Windows development (see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/learn/devops-at-microsoft/use-git-microsoft for more information).

In this section, we will look at a few tips for working with Git in WSL. Some tips are covered in previous chapters and linked for further information, while others are new tips – both are tied together here for handy reference.

Let's start by looking at a quick win for most command-line tools: bash completion.

Bash completion with Git

When working with many command-line tools, bash completion can save you a lot of typing, and git is no exception.

For example, git com<TAB> will produce git commit, and git chec<TAB> will produce git checkout. If the partial...