microsoft / microsoft/WSL

Add snapshot feature to WSL

Open
#12,567 4 comments 8 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
feature
Dominant language
C++
Stars
33.7k
Forks
1.8k
Avg merge
3d 17h
Merged PRs (30d)
116

Description

**Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.**
No.

**Describe the solution you'd like**
WSL 2 is a lightweight virtual machine, but it lacks an important feature of a virtual machine: snapshots (or "checkpoints/restore points"), which are key features in VMware Workstation and Orcale VirtualBox, as well as Hyper-V, to save the state of one or more specific nodes for instances in WSL 2, ensuring that after some error changes, they can be restored from the snapshot of the last healthy node immediately. Instead of recreating the entire instance.

**Describe alternatives you've considered**
As with other existing hypervisors, it should provide feature of snapshot managing (GUI and CLI).

**Additional context**
The command-line tool can be specified as `wsl --snapshot` or `wsl --checkpoint`, and contains `--create`, `--delete`, `--restore` and other similar commands.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reviewing the existing WSL command-line interface and how WSL 2 instances are managed; the issue names no source files or tests. Done would require agreed snapshot management for WSL 2 nodes, including create, delete, and restore operations through the proposed CLI and GUI.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli, operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
20/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.