Developing Python On Windows With WSL

Description:

This post describes how I started developing python scripts using vscode on Windows but using WSL under the hood for linux development tasks. See my dot files post for some references to these settings.

To Resolve:

1. Following Microsoft’s Developing in WSL … :
   • Install WSL
   • Sign into your distro, create a user, run apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y
   • Install vscode on Windows
   • Install Remote Development extensions on Windows
   • Inside vscode, run wsl and then code . and it will install a bunch of stuff in your Ubunutu system
   • Inside vscode (which is in Ubuntu now after previous code . command) run sudo apt-get install python3-pip
   • Create a python script and put shebang at top #!/usr/bin/python3 and run it. It will say something about installing a linter and since we installed pip it will install it - I chose pylint and autopep8
   • Now add a few more lines and do the ctrl+shift+f thing and it should auto format your code

2. Next, in WSL type vi ~/.bashrc and add to the bottom of the file cd /mnt/q/google/scripts/python. This will set it to where everything I do will sync with Google so I can pick up on any computer I have Backup and sync installed.

   • Also, if you have a settings.json, I would sync it to your WSL machine.
   • Note that this file will be highly modified because I didn’t install half the extensions I use in my Windows vscode.

3. A few things I noticed:

   • For a folder rename error: '/mnt/q/google/scripts/python/z_python/plex-backup' => '/mnt/q/google/scripts/python/z_python/current' Error: EACCES: permission denied, rename , I fixed by setting one of my settings.json lines to remote.WSL.fileWatcher.polling to true

   • For no pip: There is no Pip installer available in the selected environment, I found the path to the WSL extension and added pip install --upgrade pip on the end: /usr/bin/python3 /home/myuser/.vscode-server/extensions/ms-python.python-2020.5.86806/pythonFiles/pyvsc-run-isolated.py pip install --upgrade pip