Just clone this repository (git clone https://github.com/ajkessel/wsltools.git) and then run install.sh as root.
wsl-wrapper allows you to execute Windows commands in WSL with proper pathname parsing.
For example, if notepad.exe is in your path, with this solution, you can execute:
notepad.exe ~/readme.txt
...causing notepad to open and correctly find readme.txt in your WSL home directory, rather than throw an error because it doesn't know about ~.
This wrapper should also allow you to specify a number of parameters, including command-line switches and multiple filenames, for example:
gvim.exe -o ~/file1.txt ~/path/file2.txt
This should open the Windows gvim.exe executable with a split-pane view and both file1.txt and path/file2.txt from your WSL home directory open.
- First, make sure you have these lines in
/etc/wsl.conf, as described in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl-config:
[interop]
enabled=true
appendWindowsPath=false
- Copy wsl.conf from this repository to
/etc/binfmt.d - Copy wsl-wrapper to
/usr/local/bin - Make sure the file is world-readable/executable (
chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/wsl-wrapper) - Reload binfmt configuration (either
sudo systemctl restart systemd-binfmtor just restart WSL instancewsl --shutdownfrom PowerShell)
You can use this same technique to make PowerShell scripts executable just from their filenames in WSL with the wrapper powershell-wrapper. Follow these steps:
- Copy powershell.conf to
/etc/binfmt.d - Copy powershell-wrapper to
/usr/local/bin/ - Make sure the file is world-readable/executable (
chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/powershell-wrapper) - Reload binfmt or restart WSL
You should then be able to execute a PowerShell just by name (e.g., ~/myscript.ps1 argument1 argument2) and it will work from WSL.
As currently implemented, the PowerShell wrapper does its best to find a Windows PowerShell executable, and if that fails, it tries to find a PowerShell executable. Feel free to hardcode $powerExe in the script with your path preference.
Same deal with Microsoft Office files via office-wrapper. Follow these steps:
- Copy office.conf to
/etc/binfmt.d - Copy office-wrapper to
/usr/local/bin/ - Make sure the file is world-readable/executable (
chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/office-wrapper) - Reload binfmt or restart WSL
You should then be able to open a Microsoft Office document just by name (e.g., ~/docs/mydocument.docx or /mnt/c/documents/myspreadsheet.xlsx) and it will work from WSL.
wslshim is a script that will symlink a Windows executable into ~/.local/bin without the filename extension. So, for example, if you run:
wslshim notepad
...it will locate notepad.exe and create a symlink to it in ~/.local/bin/notepad.
You can optionally use wslshim to map filename arguments to the executable, similar to the wrapper method above, by specifying -f with the invocation. But the wsl-wrapper method renders that unnecessary.
If you see this message in /var/log/syslog:
systemd[1]: systemd-binfmt.service - Set Up Additional Binary Formats was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionVirtualization=!wsl).
You can fix it by adding this line to /etc/wsl.conf:
[boot]
protectBinFmt=false
Or alternatively by removing /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-binfmt.service.d/wsl.conf (or commenting out the ConditionVirtualization line therein), and then restart WSL.
I have filed an issue on WSL to try to figure out what's going on with that as it only recently started happening.
If there is enough interest in this, I may package it up as a Debian/Ubuntu package for easier installation.