Working with WSL Environment

Getting started with WSL

Let’s start with the simple instruction on how to set up the WSL environment in CLion:

1. Download and install WSL distribution (for instance, Ubuntu) from Microsoft Store

2. Run Ubuntu. Note: upon the first lunch of Ubuntu the system may prompt you to enable the Windows optional feature. In this case, you need to:

   • Open Windows Power Shell as Administrator and run the following:

     Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux

   • Restart your computer.

3. Create a new user and specify your user name and password.

4. Set up WSL Ubuntu environment:

   • Install cmake, gcc, or/and clang (and optionally build-essentials package), as follows:

     sudo apt-get install cmake gcc clang gdb build-essential

   • Configure and run open ssh-server.

   You can set the configuration manually or by using our script (note that if your Linux distribution is different from Ubuntu, the script might need adjustments). To download and run the script, use the following command line:
   wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JetBrains/clion-wsl/master/ubuntu_setup_env.sh && bash ubuntu_setup_env.sh

5. Next, check up the ssh connection:

   ssh username@localhost -p2222
   Note: port number 2222 is valid for our configuration script. If you are not using our script, the port number can be different.

6. Now you can run CLion and create a toolchain for WSL:

   

Current issues and limitations:

Due to the IntelliJ platform issue, there are problems with using WSL file-system which is case-sensitive and Windows file system which is not. As a workaround, you can do the following:

• Go to Help | Edit Custom properties... menu option and specify

  idea.case.sensitive.fs=true

• Invalidate caches and restart the IDE using File | Invalidate Caches and Restart menu option.