Selfhosting on Windows/WSL

This guide is for you if you want to selfhost VS Code on Windows but have a fast compile toolchain by running it in WSL. The drawback is that running VS Code from sources actually runs on Linux which is OK for most development tasks.

Setup

In Windows:

1. Install WSL2 and Ubuntu.
2. Install vcxsrv, it will create a XLaunch shortcut in your Desktop`.
3. Download the config.xlaunch file from this gist to your user home directory C:\Users\USERNAME\.
4. Hit Win R and type shell:startup, hit Enter. Add a shortcut here for C:\Program Files\VcXsrv\xlaunch.exe.
5. Right-click, Properties on that shortcut and change Target to "C:\Program Files\VcXsrv\xlaunch.exe" -run C:\Users\USERNAME\config.xlaunch. This will make the X server launch on startup. Double click it to make sure it launches.

In WSL:

1. Add the following to the end of your WSL .bashrc or equivalent:

if [ -z $DISPLAY ]; then
  export DISPLAY="$(tail -1 /etc/resolv.conf | cut -d' ' -f2):0"
fi

2. To test everything, open a new WSL shell and sudo apt install x11-apps && xcalc. You should see an XCalc window pop up. 👍

You may see errors like Error: Can't open display: 172.20.192.1:0": open Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security, check inbound rules and make sure that VcXsrv windows server doesn't block private connections.

3. Install build deps

sudo apt install python libsecret-1-dev libxss1 libx11-dev libxkbfile-dev libasound2 libgtk-3-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libnss3 libxtst6 libxi6 libxdamage1 libxcursor1 libxcomposite1 libx11-xcb1

3. In Windows, install VS Code Insiders for Windows and the Remote - WSL extension.
4. In VS Code, clone vscode, run yarn, start the build and run ./scripts/code.sh to run dev.