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Selfhosting on Windows WSL

Alexander Frick edited this page May 17, 2024 · 1 revision

Selfhosting on Windows/WSL

This guide is for you if you want to selfhost VS Code on Windows but have a fast compile toolchain by running it in WSL. The drawback is that running VS Code from sources actually runs on Linux which is OK for most development tasks.

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Setting up WSL with GUI

In Windows 11 builds that support wslg:

  1. Open up powershell and enter wsl --install

In Windows builds that do not support wslg:

  1. Install WSL2 and Ubuntu.

  2. Install vcxsrv, it will create a XLaunch shortcut in your Desktop`.

  3. Download the config.xlaunch file from this gist to your user home directory C:\Users\USERNAME\.

  4. Hit Win R and type shell:startup, hit Enter. Add a shortcut here for C:\Program Files\VcXsrv\xlaunch.exe.

  5. Right-click, Properties on that shortcut and change Target to "C:\Program Files\VcXsrv\xlaunch.exe" -run C:\Users\USERNAME\config.xlaunch. This will make the X server launch on startup. Double click it to make sure it launches.

  6. In WSL, add the following to the end of ~/.bashrc or equivalent:

if [ -z $DISPLAY ]; then
  export DISPLAY="$(tail -1 /etc/resolv.conf | cut -d' ' -f2):0"
fi
  1. To test everything, open a new WSL shell and sudo apt install x11-apps && xcalc. You should see an XCalc window pop up. 👍

You may see errors like Error: Can't open display: 172.20.192.1:0": open Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security, check inbound rules and make sure that VcXsrv windows server doesn't block private connections.

Building and running in WSL

  1. Install the Debian-based Linux prerequisites.
  2. Install the build dependencies
sudo apt install python3 python-is-python3 libsecret-1-dev libxss1 libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libasound2 libgtk-3-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libnss3 libxtst6 libxi6 libxdamage1 libxcursor1 libxcomposite1 libx11-xcb1 libgbm1
  1. Install VS Code Insiders for Windows and the Remote - WSL extension.
  2. Follow the build and run instructions for Linux.
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