My WSL Setup for Development

Lloyd Stubber — Sun, 09 Jul 2017 23:17:47 +0000

After a few headaches with running the Git Bash on Windows I’ve decided to move over the WSL for all development purposes. I’m very new to Linux so this is a very top-level overview of what I've done and some notes on issues I ran into.

If you have anything to ad, please comment below or feel free to create a PR for the repo here.

Enjoy!

Download & Install the WSL

Follow the very thorough instructions here

Get your terminal looking pretty pt.1

Download Hyper.js here
I went with the 'hyperblue' theme

Automatically open in Bash

Open up Hyper and type Ctrl + ,
Scroll down to shell and change it to C:\\Windows\\System32\\bash.exe

Install Zsh

Run this sudo apt-get install zsh
Open your bash profile nano ~/.bashrc
Add this to set it to use ZSH as default:

if [ -t 1 ]; then
exec zsh
fi

Get your terminal looking pretty pt.2

Install Oh My Zsh with sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Read docs here on how to add more plugins and change themes (I went with their out of the box 'robbyrussell').

Fix the ls and cd colours

Out of the box when you ls or cd + Tab you get some nasty background colours on the directories. To fix this, crack open your ~/.zshrc file and add this to the end:

#Change ls colours
LS_COLORS="ow=01;36;40" && export LS_COLORS

#make cd use the ls colours
zstyle ':completion:*' list-colors "${(@s.:.)LS_COLORS}"
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit

Install Git

Run this sudo apt update
Then run sudo apt install git

Setup a SSH key and link to your Github

Follow the Linux steps here to create a key and add it to your SSH agent
Then type cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
Copy your key from the terminal and paste it into your Github keys

Install Node Version Manager

Follow the instructions here which will get you running on Node/npm and can easily roll-back versions to suit.

Install Gulp CLI

Follow the Gulp docs here.

Notes

I had trouble with Node/npm/Gulp before realising Ubuntu won’t automatically upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04 - as mentioned in this article. If you’re in the same boat, upgrade via these instructions.
I also had trouble with older versions of Windows 10 not liking Gulp via the WSL - inotify and socket issues. Make sure you're running on the Creators Update or Insiders Program versions.
If your shell is running slow (mine was) switch from nvm to n and install it with their curl command. First make sure to uninstall nvm and get rid of any trace of Nodejs/npm. If n doesn't work as a command on zsh, it would have installed it's path into your ~/.bashrc so just copy it over to your ~/.zshrc.

Forem: Lloyd Stubber