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by stopthe 397 days ago
A lot of people here are saying nice things about having dev environment on WSL. Honest question: how do you deal with with those minor but insufferable Windows' quirks like 0d0a line endings, selective Unicode support, byte-order-marks and so on.

While right now I enjoy the privilege to develop on Linux, things may change.

5 comments

The worlds don't really cross. If I'm using WSL to develop software using a Linux toolchain I'm not using any other Windows tools, other than VS Code, in that environment. I could but I just don't find the need. I could literally be remoted into an actual physical Linux box and the experience would be nearly identical.

Occasionally I'll use File Explorer to manage my Linux file system or Linux tools on the Windows file system but really not the degree in which any quirks would be an issue.

may be you missed the point - in WSL, you are with Linux/unix based env. So your Vim or other editors and tools just work like in regular Linux, Windows part until needed can be invisible and uninvolved.

Other tools like VSCode IDE, has special handling (extension) to work _inside_ WSL and only keep GUI frontend on the Windows side (very close to how it works over SSH).

On the other hand, I quite often use "explorer.exe ." inside WSL to open File Explorer and jiggle around with files downloaded/created/modified (say with sed) in WSL and it works fine too.

Or use MarkText markdown editor on folder inside WSL being some git repo and I'm adding docs/instructions there.

Well that gives some hope, unless they (I'm speculating about future possible employer) just disable WSL
I'm using WSL since about 2017 on insider builds and wsl1 for occasional cases and WSL2 as as daily driver for, 5 years, so nice for me and no need in Linux on desktop.
For me, I just accepts the quirks and move on with other things in life.
How do you deal with the mac 0x0A line endings?
> Honest question: how do you deal with with those minor but insufferable Windows' quirks like 0d0a line endings, selective Unicode support, byte-order-marks and so on.

exactly why I use WSL, lf-only line endings, UTF-8, everything a basic debian bookworm iso can provide, plus docker with GPU Access