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IETF Tools development on Windows

While most projects can run in a docker container on Windows, you'll likely encounter various issues and performance limitations by doing so. It's recommended to instead develop in WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) which enables you to run a full Linux system directly on Windows.

Requirements

  • Windows 10 version 2004 and higher (Build 19041 and higher), or Windows 11
  • Virtualization enabled on your machine
  • Docker Desktop

Optional but recommended

Install WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux)

Instructions taken from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install

In an administrator PowerShell or Command Prompt, run the following command and then restart your machine:

wsl --install

This command will enable the required optional components, download the latest Linux kernel, set WSL 2 as your default, and install the default Ubuntu distribution.

The first time you launch a newly installed Linux distribution, a console window will open and you'll be asked to wait for files to de-compress and be stored on your machine. All future launches should take less than a second.

Note that you can install any other Linux distro afterwards from the Microsoft Store.

Run WSL for the first time

You can either:

  • use Windows Terminal (recommended) and select Ubuntu in the dropdown list
  • from a Powershell / Command Prompt, type wsl.exe
  • from the Start Menu, click on the linux distribution you installed (e.g. Ubuntu)

You'll be prompted to choose a username and password the first time.

Enable Docker Integration

In order to use Docker inside WSL2, we need to enable Docker integration in Desktop Desktop.

  1. Open Docker Desktop and go to Settings.
  2. Under the Resources > WSL Integration tab, make sure that Enable integration with my default WSL distro is enabled. If you installed additional distros from the Microsoft Store, make sure to enable them as well.
  3. Click Apply & Restart

Clone a project in WSL2

In WSL2, create a directory for your projects, under your home folder, e.g.:

mkdir projects
cd projects

Then clone the project of your choice at that location, e.g. for datatracker:

git clone https://github.com/ietf-tools/datatracker.git

Open the project in VS Code

Navigate to the project folder and run code ., e.g.:

cd datatracker
code .

This will launch VS Code installed on your host and open the folder residing in WSL2.

From there, you can re-open the project in a devcontainer by typing CTRL + SHIFT + P, then typing reopen and select Dev Containers: Reopen in Container.