[WSL2] File changes made by Windows apps on Windows filesystem don't trigger notifications for Linux apps

[SteveSandersonMS]

WSL2 is really close to being a perfect runtime environment for server apps being developed in Windows. Great job! One missing feature however is breaking a core part of the developer flow.

For sources stored on the Windows filesystem, any changes made by Windows applications such as Visual Studio do not trigger any file change notifications as far as Linux apps are concerned. This means that all "live rebuild"-type tools don't work (examples: webpack --watch, jekyll --interactive, and Tilt.dev) when running under WSL2. This unfortunately renders many modern dev workflows unviable.

Notes:

• I strongly expect this is already a known issue as hinted here. However I was unable to find any open GitHub issue that specifically tracks this. Unable to save file when inotify is in use (using Node) #1956 is about a different scenario, File contents differs on mounted Windows drive between Windows and WSL #4064 isn't specifically about change notifications, [WSL 2] File watchers like create-react-app, gulp or sass doesn't work #4224 is closed, WSL2 Increase the maximum amount of inotify user watches #4293 doesn't fix it.
• I'm aware the WSL team suggests that with WSL2 it's good to store your application sources inside the Linux filesystem instead of the Windows one. However I don't think that's a viable solution since the whole point of WSL (for me) is to be able to use Windows-based editors such as full VS with a Linux dev environment. If it was sufficient to use Linux-based editors, I'd just use Mac/Linux as my actual OS and would have no need for WSL.
• This did work great on WSL1
• Changing fs.inotify.max_user_watches doesn't affect this, since the issue is about changes originating on the Windows side.

Bug report template

• Your Windows build number: 10.0.19033.1

• What you're doing and what's happening:

  This applies to all tools that listen for file change notifications, but as an example take webpack. Repro steps:

  • In your Windows filesystem, create an empty directory (example: c:\repro), and then add these three files to it
  • In a WSL2 Ubuntu 18.04 environment, install Node and NPM: sudo apt-get install nodejs npm
  • Still in WSL2, go into the directory from earlier: cd /mnt/c/repro
  • Restore NPM dependencies: npm i
  • Run Webpack in watch mode: npm run build:watch. Wait a few seconds until it completes the first build. It will now be waiting for further changes to your source files.
  • In a Windows application (e.g., Notepad or Visual Studio), open c:\repro\index.js and save some change to it. For example, change 'Hello, world' to 'Hello, world 2'.

• What's wrong / what should be happening instead:

  Expected behavior: Webpack should see the change and rebuild. That is, you'll see it log information about another build, and the output in dist/bundle.js will be updated.

  Actual behavior: Webpack doesn't respond at all, because there's no file change notification.

Finally I understand that the fix for this is likely to be "add file watch capabilities to the Plan9 server", and you may feel this is already being tracked by #4064. However #4064 describes a more obscure symptom of this missing feature and makes it sound like an intermittent issue. What I'm reporting here is not intermittent at all, and is a pretty mainstream scenario (using tools like webpack --watch). Thanks!

[therealkenc]

Yes, #4064 is most unfortunately titled. Worse, the OP has no repro steps and an unecessary symlink confusing the direction they are talking about. Craig's notepad.exe repro with cat isn't an inotify(7) (file watcher) problem, even if implementing inotify is the fix to whatever loosly implied sync problems are going on over there.

Nevertheless #4701 got closed as a dupe with (quoth):

We need to add file watch capabilities to the Plan9 server that serves files to a WSL2 distro, and we're tracking that work item here

So, best I can tell, #4064 is being treated as the LZ for inotify triggers from Windows to WSL2. For lack. #4169 is pretty much exactly your use-case also landed dupe #4064.

This did work great on WSL1

Yes, known regress.

[nake89]

Is there a temporary fix to this? This is giving me a headache.

Using Windows 10, WSL 2. Running npm run serve on my Vue project, which normally hot reloads when I do changes (on my Linux and Mac, and WSL1 and I think maybe WSL2 before(?)). Now I have to shut down and restart the Vue server.

Will probably just install Linux on this machine. Developing on a Windows machine is a real pain.

[craigloewen-msft]

@nake89 are you able to move your project over to the Linux root file system? i.e: Store in your Linux home folder for example? Are there any factors that are blocking you from doing so?

And per @therealkenc 's comment this would be a much better landing zone for adding inotify to the 9P file server. I'll update my comment in #4701 to point here, and add some tags to this issue.

[nake89]

@craigloewen-msft Thanks for messaging me back! I actually solved my issue by moving my project to the linux filesystem in WSL and have had no problems so far. I suggest doing the same. In VS Code simply type ctrl-shift-p and then type "Remote-WSL: New Window" This lets users use the linux filesystem in vs code, for those that did not know this :)

[SteveSandersonMS]

@nake89 That's great if your scenario allows it. But just to clarify for anyone else reading, that's not a solution in general as it doesn't work for other Windows-based editors such as VS.

[craigloewen-msft]

@SteveSandersonMS agreed, we will still be tracking this issue here. :)

[ghost]

Hi, I am encountering this with docker-sync. My setup is:

• working folder under C:\users for various php projects
• Edit a file in phpstorm
• Changes reflected within my WSL2 Ubuntu instance
• Running docker containers within WSL2 with volumes synced using docker-sync and Unison

If I make a change to a file directly inside Ubuntu, changes are reflected in the container's mounted volume. However, if I edit a file in PhpStorm in Windows, the change is reflected in Ubuntu as expected but not in the container.

I can't easily move my files to the Linux filesystem because I need to use PhpStorm and other Windows tools in my dev environment, and I also have other stuff such as Google drive sync running to back up local changes. So the workaround doesn't work for me.

[Carl-Hugo]

@craigloewen-msft Thanks for messaging me back! I actually solved my issue by moving my project to the linux filesystem in WSL and have had no problems so far. I suggest doing the same. In VS Code simply type ctrl-shift-p and then type "Remote-WSL: New Window" This lets users use the linux filesystem in vs code, for those that did not know this :)

This is a great workaround that will save me lots of time until WSL2 supports this use-case. Thanks for sharing!

[Carl-Hugo]

@craigloewen-msft Thanks for messaging me back! I actually solved my issue by moving my project to the linux filesystem in WSL and have had no problems so far. I suggest doing the same. In VS Code simply type ctrl-shift-p and then type "Remote-WSL: New Window" This lets users use the linux filesystem in vs code, for those that did not know this :)

This is a great workaround that will save me lots of time until WSL2 supports this use-case. Thanks for sharing!

I wrote a small blog post explaining this workaround and talking about a few more things that I discovered/experienced, using Jekyll on WSL2: Speed up your builds to up to 375% and watch for changes for an even faster dev cycle using this workaround on WSL2/Ubuntu, if that can help someone.

Note: that applies to more than just Jekyll, Jekyll it was just the catalyst.

[safizn]

For those stumbling upon, some notes about WSL2 features & limitations (OS build 19041.21, insiders slow ring):

• inotify filesystem events are not propagated between WSL2 & Windows. Although it will be supported in future releases as stated in Microsoft documentation.
• Accessing Windows filesystem from WSL2, when developing is extremely slow. While moving projects to WSL2 filesystem, will increase performance, much faster than WSL1 & Windows development. (WSL2 can be accessed in path \\wsl$\)
• VSCode installed in Windows, with remote extension pack, will install VSCode server automatically in WSL2. Some extensions should be installed in the WSL2 side to work, when openning files from the local WSL2 filesystem. The VSCode Extenions tab in the UI provides indications and guides through the required changes.
• localhost is managed for you by Windows, and allows access to WSL2. Some cases require accessing the WSL2 VM by it's IP directly.
• Symlinks in WSL2 work seamlessly between WSL2, Docker containers, & Windows, which wasn't the case with WSL1. Using Docker Desktop on WSL2 experimental feature.
• Some graphical programs (e.g. SmartGit/GitKraken) need to be installed in WSL2 and accessed through GUI client through Windows (Unix X server), to overcome the inotify events & performance degredations.

[ivellios]

While I am having similar issue with my React App and I am looking for a solution to this as well, I can reply to:

I can't easily move my files to the Linux filesystem because I need to use PhpStorm and other Windows tools in my dev environment, and I also have other stuff such as Google drive sync running to back up local changes. So the workaround doesn't work for me.
@weknowsoftware

@nake89 That's great if your scenario allows it. But just to clarify for anyone else reading, that's not a solution in general as it doesn't work for other Windows-based editors such as VS.
@SteveSandersonMS

This hint by @myuseringithub:

• Accessing Windows filesystem from WSL2, when developing is extremely slow. While moving projects to WSL2 filesystem, will increase performance, much faster than WSL1 & Windows development. (WSL2 can be accessed in path \\wsl$\)

is a great one to help you! Also I found out yesterday that since \\wsl$\ is a network resource in Windows you can easily map it to a drive. Then in ANY editor/tool you can use it as if it was on your computer. Just go to the Explorer and manually enter this address to access the resource. You will most likely see "Ubuntu" folder. It is a root of your WSL and it can be mapped to the drive (right click -> map to drive). That helped me setup my project on WSL natively, while being able to edit in the windows editor.

Though now I am struggling with Docker containers permissions, which I hope to solve separately and see if reloads in my app work.

Hope that helps.

[nicks]

Is there anything that app devs can do to workaround this in their apps? e.g., is there a different file-change notification API that would work on WSL2 across filesystems? (there are a lot of different file-change notification APIs). Or should we wait patiently for inotify support?

[Carl-Hugo]

Is there anything that app devs can do to workaround this in their apps? e.g., is there a different file-change notification API that would work on WSL2 across filesystems? (there are a lot of different file-change notification APIs). Or should we wait patiently for inotify support?

You can use the Linux file system directly, accessible from Windows too; see #4739 (comment)

[mattlacey]

@Carl-Hugo Does that work for you, as in, are changed detected? I've been using the \wsl$ path with windows editors for a while because with WSL2 the Linux FS is so much faster, but even when using windows editors with files stored there it's not triggering HMR when using npm watch.

[Carl-Hugo]

@mattlacey Yes it works...

1. 
2. ctrl+s the README.md file in VS Code (Windows)
3. 

Side note: for-the-new-order is not a sect but a Star Wars RPG thing 😉

[vielhuber]

Some graphical programs (e.g. SmartGit/GitKraken) need to be installed in WSL2 and accessed through GUI client through Windows (Unix X server), to overcome the inotify events & performance degredations.

Can you please elaborate on that: Is this working well? Any tutorials / starting points how to set this up?

[safizn]

@vielhuber I wrote it as a comment for myself, tried to implement it once without success. Just wait till WSL2 will support inotify. You could still use graphical interfaces for git, only that you would have to constantly refresh to see changes, which is the same case when dealing with VSCode's git panel.

But if you wish to dig deeper, check out:

I wrote these comments when setting up my development environment

• Setup Linux graphical server and Windows client to access WSL2 graphical programs: https://medium.com/@chuckdries/installing-gitkraken-in-wsl-2-15bf6459f823 https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WSL#Running_Graphical_Applications
• Install smartGit graphical program in WSL2 and access it through Windows to take advantage of inotify support for autorefresh (as not yet supported), and use wsl own git installation.
• (follow steps of above link) Install X server e.g. VcXsrv, symlink configs (from this repo's resource folder), set firewall protocol to allow WSL2 own ip access.
• smartgit for linux https://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/download/#installation-instructions

[vielhuber]

@myuseringithub Awesome thank you.

[huysentruitw]

I use my regular Git client in Windows, because my project is still on my Windows machine. However, to get livereload working, I simply add a symlink from my WSL2 home directory to the project on my windows machine, f.e.:

ln -s /mnt/d/projects/contrib/create-your-future-website/ ~/create-your-future-website

After that, I start jekyll serve --livereload from ~/create-your-future-website and open that folder in VS code using ctrl-shift-p and then type "Remote-WSL: New Window" as explained above.

This way, you don't have to move your project and can still enjoy your favorite git client in Windows. Profit!

[huysentruitw]

Arg, scratch the above idea. It only seems to get triggered by file changes at the top-level directory. 😢

[adam-ah]

Geez, 4 years, still no solution? This bug breaks so many things.
How do we escalate it to MS to have a look?

[PaulOst]

Is MS monitoring these issues?

[erentar]

I also desperately need this feature

[mattbell87]

I also desperately need this feature

Can you run your project inside WSL? That fixes issues like this for me. If you need access from Windows just use \\wsl$ in explorer/files.

[raffaeler]

Can you run your project inside WSL? That fixes issues like this for me. If you need access from Windows just use \\wsl$ in explorer/files.

accessing is not enough, the need is to use rsync to keep the files updated (aka file system notification).

Anyway, on my side I don't care anymore as I moved my dev machine to Ubuntu and resolved this issue radically. The best surprise from this move, was discovering the file system operations on Ubuntu are hugely faster during C++/.NET compile time or nodjs development.

[EmmanuelTheCoder]

I also desperately need this feature

Can you run your project inside WSL? That fixes issues like this for me. If you need access from Windows just use \\wsl$ in explorer/files.

That works but it defeats interoperability. Didn't they say that WSL is interoperable with Windows?

[MiikaH]

That works but it defeats interoperability. Didn't they say that WSL is interoperable with Windows?

Not sure what you mean by that.

You keep your projects in WSL file system, access them via \\wsl.localhost\ . Explorer access, editor & IDE access, docker and everything should pretty much work the same way as if you stored your project on C:\, D:\ etc, but now the files are on Linux ext4 filesystem so performance should be way higher than NTFS and file system notifications work as expected, as stated above.

And if you want to take things one step further you can (on top of WSL) setup your project to use VSCode "Dev Containers" in order to run the project & VSCode in virtual Linux distro of your choosing. Which not only makes it easier to run Linux primary projects on Windows as you can just run the linux commands natively for the project, improves WSL disk compatibility when the whole setup is doing native linux filesystem calls, and it also separates project dependencies of you main system. As in you can run whichever version of Node.js, Python for each project dev container without any conflicts with versions installed on your host OS. That way if project x recommends Debian, Python 3.10, Cmake 3.8 or whatever - no problem, just configure your devcontainer with those dependencies and you are good to go.

[adam-ah]

@MiikaH sorry, this is totally irrelevant. Could we please stay on topic and focus on the bug in WSL?
(this message does not require a response)

[MiikaH]

Discussing workarounds for the bug is the only relevant use for this topic, so that people who are affected can find a working solution for their use case. Especially when it is clear that we may have to wait decade or two until Microsoft actually fixes the bug itself.

[HugoImaios]

You can't call "don't use X feature" a workaround for an issue titled "feature X does not work".

The issue is "File changes made by Windows apps on Windows filesystem don't trigger notifications for Linux apps".
Therefore, "don't use Windows filesystem, use the Linux one", does not seem an acceptable workaround for this particular issue (even if it actually works, as much as installing a full ubuntu, running a rapsberry or riding a bike)

[WaldemarH]

Nothing works :(

I've tried the /mnt/... version it doesn't work.

I've also tried the linux filesystem:

1. I've created /var/www/client folder
2. mounted "net use Y: \wsl.localhost\RockyLinux-8 /PERSISTENT:YES"
3. started webpack in client
4. edited a file on a Y disk inside the client folder and nothing, zero, nada, zilch

So currently WSL2 is useles for webpack development. :(

[mcnilz]

I found a pretty ugly workaround some time ago. Since the pain of this issue seems never to end I want to share it.

In my development docker image I added the "Unison file synchronizer", supervisor and scripts.
Unison is used to synchronize the to /tmp directory (that must be volume or tmpfs but not bind).
Supervisor is used to manage the ongoing sync process and other goodies out of the scope of the main issue.

The code for nodejs development is here: https://github.com/bridgefield/docker-node-dev
Dotnet development here https://github.com/bridgefield/dotnet-core-sdk-extra
The repositories are rarely updated sinice they are not in use at the moments. Maybe ppl can adopt the ideas to their projects.

The solution is far from being perfect. It takes much performance because unison can not use ionotify.

[adam-ah]

@WaldemarH maybe it's better to delete your not-so-relevant comments on this bug? This is a bug report about WSL2 file system change notifications, not a samba tutorial.

[WaldemarH]

@rw3iss So should I put it back on? .. I know I would be happy if somebody gave me at least some working option.

[rw3iss]

@WaldemarH Yeah... would suggest just summarizing it a bit as you did, as an alternative solution, and then maybe linking to a gist with full instructions. Doesn't hurt and someone else may find it useful for sure. AFAIK it's one of the only ways to actually link them via network operations.

[Fusseldieb]

This is still an issue.

I have to use usePolling: true with vite to get it working, but this eats 60% of my CPU and just makes everything sluggish.

Will this ever be solved? We aren't talking about a solo maintainer here, but Microsoft.

[nwoodr94]

My team and I have completed our migration to NextJS. About a dozen apps. No issues with HMR since.

…

On Thu, Jun 6, 2024, 6:59 AM Valentino Stillhardt ***@***.***> wrote: This is still an issue. I have to use usePolling: true with vite to get it working, but this eats 60% of my CPU and just makes everything sluggish. Will this ever be solved? We aren't talking about a solo maintainer here, but *Microsoft*. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4739 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AK77FPBD3X37QYQBJ36U2S3ZGBMMPAVCNFSM4JWZQM4KU5DIOJSWCZC7NNSXTN2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQ5TEMJVGIZTONBVGIZA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Fusseldieb]

In the meantime I found a workaround using the interval parameter set to 1000 (1 second). The default is 100 and bombards the PC with requests. It's now down to 15% CPU usage on my 8th gen i7 machine.

Vite:

usePolling: true,
interval: 1000

It's now a lot faster, but it's also just a workaround, not a fix. Hope to see this fixed someday.

[Fleker]

Is there a way for Angular to use polling in its CLI? The most recent versions of Node and Angular no longer work on the Legacy WSL instance, which does have proper filesystem listening. While this bug was a bit tedious to start with, it is going to be increasingly hard to balance up-to-date dev tools in a Legacy container.