microsoft / microsoft/WSL

Use WSLENV to append to an environment variable

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#6,020 2 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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feature
Dominant language
C++
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

It would be nice to be able to use WSLENV to append to environment variables rather than replace them.

My main motivation is running a Windows executable in a Linux shell. I can do this now but I have to make sure my PATH contains all the Windows paths that are needed before I do a

export WSLENV=PATH/lw

I'm mainy adding directories to the PATH containing DLLs needed by the executable I am running. I would much rather set my LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which is the natural thing for Linux, in my shell script and then get WSLENV to append it to the Windows PATH, so maybe something like

export WSLENV=PATH+LD_LIBRARY_PATH/lw

This would mean append the Linux LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to the existing Windows PATH environment variable and convert the paths in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH while doing it. The Linux PATH environment variable would not be exported.
So if my LD_LIBRARY_PATH was /mnt/c/Users/davidhunter2/bin then C:\Users\davidhunter22\bin would be appended to the Windows PATH whatever that happened to already be. Obviously with a ';' separator if needed.

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First steps

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  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the WSLENV=PATH/lw example and review how WSLENV currently handles environment-variable replacement and path conversion. The change would need to define and implement append semantics for a Linux variable such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH, including Windows PATH separators and preserving the existing Windows value.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp, linux
Domain
operating-systems
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

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