tprasadtp / wsl-git

Use your WSL git binaries from Windows, VS Code

wsl-git - Use your WSL git binaries from Windows

I hate installing same program twice which do the same thing on my machine. WSL is awesome and I do most of my dev stuff from there. So, obviously, I have git installed in WSL. Wouldn't it be better if you could use git in Windows as well? Meet wsl-git.

• Its a static binary written in Go, which translates git commands from Windows to wsl.
• It uses wsl command and wslpath which is available since RS4 (1803) build of Windows 10.

Build & Release

Requirements

• Windows 10 64 Bit Build 17134 and above. [RS4 aka Windows 10 1803 Update]
• Windows Subsytem for Linux is enabled and Git is installed in it.

Note if you have multiple distros installed

This will ONLY work on default distro. You can use wslconfig to change your default distro. You can read about it here.

Usage

1. Visual Studio Code

   You need change git path in your settings.json.

   {
    "git.path": "C:\\path-to\\wsl-git.exe"
   }

2. From Powershell or cmd

   Put wsl-git.exe Somewhere in your path and you should be fine.

What's not tested

• A lot of edge cases with arguments which should be escaped.

What's Broken

• Some stuff might break (piping o/p), but you should be using WSL for them anyways.
• Output colors are gone.
• SSH requires you to setup SSH keys in WSL and not Windows. [See Workaround for using Gpg4Win or using Windows SSH client].
• GPG signing requires you to steup keys on WSL and not on Windows. [See Workaround for Gpg4Win below].
• bash escaping is done ony for few cases and not for all chars and edge cases.
• Git credential manager for Windows/gnome keyring for storing credentials.
• Exit codes are not preserved.
• pre-commit, post commit and other git hooks might not work from Windows.
• wsl-git rev-parse --show-toplevel returns wsl path and should be converted to Windows path.

Signing With GPG4Win

• GPG on Windows usues libassuan to mimic unix sockets. It uses a local server running on a random port, and a 16byte nounce is written to socket file along with port number.
• Windows did introduce AF_UNIX socket support in RS4(1803) build, which can communicate between WSL and Windows, GPG4Win does not support this yet [Will likely to stay the same for a while now].
• If you are already using GPG4Win and a smartcard like Yubikey, You might want to take a look at npiperelay, there is an open pull request which adds libassuan support via socat.
• If you are in a hurry and want to use it now, you can download the binaries from my fork follow the instrunction in the repo and you should be able to sign your commits from WSL with your GPG keys on Yubikey. Cool!
• Alternatively you can set your gpg.program to gpg.exe from Windows in your .gitconfig or .git/config.

  [gpg]
    program = /mnt/c/path-to/gpg.exe

• For SSH, the above mentioned method seems little buggy for now and hangs many times. So till it is fixed, I recommend using https://github.com/benpye/wsl-ssh-pageant, which uses the shiny new AF_SOCKET feature or NZSmartie's Go version.

SSH With Windows SSH client

• You cannot use Windows SSH client [included in Windows since 1709], Because this program acts somewhat like a proxy and uses ssh from WSL. You might however try to run ssh.exe from wsl by setting environment variable GIT_SSH_COMMAND to Windows ssh client.
• Alternatively you can set your core.sshCommnd to ssh.exe from Windows in your .gitconfig or .git/config.

  [core]
    sshCommand = /mnt/c/Windows/system32/OpenSSH/ssh.exe

Do note however that bash does not like carriage returns and this has not been tested.

GPG4win with Windows SSH client

You can use this https://github.com/tprasadtp/pipe-ssh-pageant/releases and set your GIT_SSH_COMMAND to ssh.exe from Windows.

BIG FAT WARNING

• DO NOT USE THIS IN SCRIPTS!!
• YOUR GLOBAL GITCONFIG SHOULD BE IN WSL, NOT IN WINDOWS.