Do not change Linux files using Windows apps and tools

[soheilpro]

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/do-not-change-linux-files-using-windows-apps-and-tools/

[suff]

Maybe a more accurate title would be "... using MICROSOFT apps and tools"

Non-Microsoft Windows tools like notepad2 and notepad++ handle unix line-endings just fine.

Why do Microsoft's Windows apps refuse to handle them?

[JohnFen → suff]

The issue isn't the line endings. As the linked article points out, the issue is around file-locking and that Windows cannot correctly handle Linux file metadata (permissions, owner, etc.)

[just_myles → suff]

Don't know and that used to drive me crazy. It's I knew it was a windows user because of the carriage return. Also encoding would be a nightmare as well.

[crispinb]

Out of date. I don't have the reference handy, but you can now modify wsl files from Windows as long as you access them via the \\wsl$\[distro]\ path.

[frabbit → crispinb]

From build 1903 onwards they have implemented a Styx/9P file server which the windows client can use to modify linux files: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/whats-new-for-wsl...

I will be interested to see if they have managed to fix the irritatingly slow I/O with this too.

[crispinb → frabbit]

> I will be interested to see if they have managed to fix the irritatingly slow I/O with this too

Is it worse than accessing the files directly from wsl? I certainly found that on the slow side. Though from what I've read on the topic (notably https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...) incremental improvements might be all that's ever possible given Windows' current I/O stack.

It's one of the annoyances that drove me back to Linux. That's in turn equally irritating in different ways, which will probably drive me back to Windows.