WSL workflows and how RD could integrate

[agracey]

My developer tool stack:

• Windows 10 Pro without Insiders (Build 19042, but I have an update pending)
• WSL2 OpenSUSE Leap 15.2
• Previously Docker Desktop + K3d
• VSCode with WSL "remote" integrations
• Epinio for building and running HTTP containers
• KIM for building non-HTTP containers
• Rancher or K9s for monitoring what's running and where
• VS Code git plugin
• Fish for my shell

My typical process of building an app in Windows:

• Open VS Code to ~/Projects (or use a window that's already open)
• Open integrated terminal
• mkdir project name (or git clone if it already exists)
• Switch VS Code workspace to the new folder
• write code
• epinio push (or docker build and delete pod to let it re-pull :latest)
• Mostly due to my background in UI and it's historical lack of debuggers, I tend to use logging and tracing for debugging instead of breakpoints... I think in microservices, this is not abnormal since your error could be anywhere.

I don't think I've ever opened up powershell for anything other than chocolatey, and don't ever use WSL in it's own window. Everything development is done via VS Code.

Personally, my core asks are that it's either transparent or well documented how to to install and configure kim and kubectl when using WSL. There is an intersection of knowledge domains in our target audience:

• k8s and it's config expectations
• WSL and how to move files between windows and linux
• developers who might be used to loading up eclipse and not touching anything else on their system.