microsoft / microsoft/WSL

More fine grained error message when failing export command

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#8,594 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
feature
Dominant language
C++
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

When exporting a image to a file using `--export` and the target filename is a directory, wsl should emit an error indicating that the reason for failure was that a directory, rather than a file was specified. Currently it simply displays `Access is denied.` which leads to investigating permissions issues rather than correcting the parameter.

```
PS D:\wsl> wsl --export 'Ubuntu-18.04' D:\wsl
Access is denied.
PS D:\wsl> wsl --export 'Ubuntu-18.04' D:\wsl\ubuntu.tar
```

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Reproduce the failure with `wsl --export 'Ubuntu-18.04' D:\wsl`, then trace the `--export` command's handling of its target path. Compare the directory case with the valid `D:\wsl\ubuntu.tar` case. Done means a directory target produces an error explaining that a directory was specified instead of a file.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
cpp
Domain
cli, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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