Setup WSL

Guidelines on how to build Alan under MS Windows OS via WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

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Table of Contents

• About WSL
  • WSL References

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About WSL

Windows 10 introduces WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables (in ELF format) natively.

Since Windows and WSL can interact with each other via Virtual File System (VFS) bridging, allowing to mix in the same toolchain usage of native Windows tools and tools from a Linux distro running under WSL, the WSL subsystem could be helpful in setting up the Alan work environment under Windows, especially for those third party tools which might prove hard to setup under Cygwin or MSYS2.

It's definitely a path worth exploring.

WSL References

• WSL Documentation — at MS Docs.
  • WSL interoperability with Windows
• Wikipedia » WSL
• Fun with the Windows Subsystem for Linux — Windows Blogs article, 2016.
• WSL File System Support — MSDN Developer Blog, 2016.