This content originally appeared on DEV Community 👩💻👨💻 and was authored by Abhigyan Madhukalya
Last time, we set up Windows Terminal and Powershell to suite our needs for a proper developer environment. In this post, we will enable and set up Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). It is a compatibility layer to help us run linux binary executables natively on Windows.
Ingredients:
- Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)
- Fish shell
- Neovim
- NodeJS
- zoxide
- Fisher (plugin manager for Fish shell)
- packer (plugin manager for Neovim)
- ArchWSL (Arch Linux for WSL)
Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux
WSL by default is disabled for everyday Windows users so we have to enable it by ourselves.
To enable WSL, enter the following command in a Powershell tab in Windows Terminal.
sudo Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux
# WSL2 (This tutorial will use WSL2)
wsl --set-default-version 2
Install a Linux distro
We could install a distro like Ubuntu directly using the
wslcommand but Ubuntu is not good distro to use for developing or programming according to me.I use Arch Linux from the yuk7/ArchWSL repository. Arch Linux is a bleeding-edge distro, meaning all packages are up-to-date with their parent repo at any given moment.
To install Arch Linux for WSL, enter the following commmands
scoop add bucket extras
scoop install archwsl
# Open Arch Linux for the first time
Arch.exe
Setup root password and default user
Unlike Ubuntu which gives you a prompt to setup the root password and default user, in Arch Linux you have to do it by yourself.
To setup root password and default user, enter the following commands that are taken from the ArchWSL website
# Boot into ArchWSl
Arch.exe
# Root password
passwd
# Enter a strong and complicated password
# to keep your ArchWSL installation
# secure
# Setup sudoers file
echo "%wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL" > /etc/sudoers.d/wheel
# Add new user
useradd -m -G wheel -s /bin/bash {username}
# Password for new user
password {username}
# Exit out of ArchWSL
exit
# Change default user
Arch.exe config --default-user {username}
Refer to documentation if you don't understand a step.
Restart your computer to confirm changes
Initialize keyring (IMPORTANT STEP)
This step is necessary for pacman (Arch Linux package manager) to work
Enter the following commands to initialize keyring
# Boot into Arch Linux
Arch.exe
# Initialize keyring
sudo pacman-key --init
sudo pacman-key --populate
# Update pacman database and programs
sudo pacman -Syu
# Install archlinux-keyring
sudo pacman -S archlinux-keyring
# Install neovim to check if everything works
sudo pacman -S neovim
Install packages for this tutorial
sudo pacman -S fish neovim base-devel git ripgrep exa
The packages we installed are:
- Neovim: Terminal text editor
- Fish: command-line shell
- base-devel: Group of packages to make life a little easier
- ripgrep:
grepbut faster - exa:
lsbut prettier
Setup Fish Shell
fish is a smart and user-friendly command line fish is a smart and user-friendly command line
shell for Linux, macOS, and the rest of the family, with built-in autosuggesstions and syntax highlighting.You can also use
zshwhich is POSIX compliant and supportsbashscripting.Switch to fish shell using the following command
# Switch to fish shell
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish
- Make a
.configdirectory for configurations
mkdir .config
# Make fish config directory
mkdir .config/fish
- Make a config.fish in
.config/fishdirectory
touch .config/fish/config.fish
- Edit config.fish to your liking
set fish_greeting ""
set -gx TERM xterm-256color
alias g git
alias grep rg
command -qv nvim && alias vim nvim
alias drop_cache="sudo sh -c \"echo 3 >'/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches' && swapoff -a && swapon -a && printf '\n%s\n' 'Ram-cache and Swap Cleared'\""
if type -q exa
alias ls='exa -l -g -a --icons --group-directories-first'
alias ll='exa -l -g --icons --group-directories-first'
alias lt="ll --tree --level=2"
end
set -gx EDITOR nvim
set -gx PATH bin $PATH
set -gx PATH ~/bin $PATH
set -gx PATH ~/.local/bin $PATH
set -gx PATH node_modules/.bin $PATH
set LOCAL_CONFIG (dirname (status --current-filename))/config-local.fish
if test -f $LOCAL_CONFIG
source $LOCAL_CONFIG
end
- Install fisher for plugins and a few plugins we'll need
# Install fisher
curl -sL https://git.io/fisher | source && fisher install jorgebucaran/fisher
# NVM
fisher install jorgebucaran/nvm.fish
# Tide (Best prompt for fish, inspired by powerlevel10k)
fisher install IlanCosman/tide@v5
- Install NodeJS using NVM
# Install LTS Version of NodeJS
nvm install 16
# Use NodeJS LTS
nvm use 16
- Add the following lines in config.fish for NVM to work properly
begin
nvm use 16
end &> /dev/null
Configure Neovim
Configuring Neovim takes a long time and can have its own blog post. Read @craftzdog post on Neovim Configuration to setup Neovim for developing.
You can also fork my dotfiles repository and use its configurations for yourself.
abhigyanmadhukalya (Abhigyan Madhukalya) · GitHub
Self-taught Developer from India. abhigyanmadhukalya has 10 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.
github.com
This concludes the second post in the series 'Turn Windows into a proper dev environment'. Now we have a proper UNIX-developer environment supported by a proper Windows-developer environment.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community 👩💻👨💻 and was authored by Abhigyan Madhukalya
Abhigyan Madhukalya | Sciencx (2022-10-02T04:14:09+00:00) Setting up WSL as a developer environment (for beginners). Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2022/10/02/setting-up-wsl-as-a-developer-environment-for-beginners/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.