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Documentation: Add filesystem note to WSL2 notes

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WSL2 is now available in non-insider builds of Windows, starting
with version 2004.

Add a filesystem note regarding use of /mnt/c et al from WSL2 for
compiling serenity. Namely, recommend against it as the performance
across the 9p file system protocol is terrible for IO heavy jobs.
This commit is contained in:
Andrew Kaster 2020-06-27 11:51:32 -06:00 committed by Andreas Kling
parent 9f58624802
commit 4f71bd54a7
1 changed files with 17 additions and 4 deletions
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21
Documentation/NotesOnWSL.md
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@ -3,10 +3,7 @@
SerenityOS can also be built and run under WSL Version 2.
WSL Version 1 is not supported since Version 1 does not support ext2, which is needed for the setup.
WSL Version 2 is currently only available for Insider Builds of Windows which are more unstable and prone to crashes.
Therefore, running SerenityOS on WSL Version 2 and running Insider Builds, in general, is not recommended on production systems.
Nevertheless, here is a guide on how to [get an Insider Build](https://insider.windows.com/en-us/how-to-pc/) and how to [get WSL2](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/wsl2-install).
WSL Version 2 requires Windows version 2004 or higher, with OS Build 19041 or greater. Here is a guide on how to [get WSL2](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10).
Once installed, you will need to make sure the distribution you want to use (and the new default) is using Version 2:
- `wsl -l -v` will list distros and versions,<br/>
- `wsl --set-version <distro> <version>` is used to convert a distro to another version, and<br/>
@ -42,3 +39,19 @@ Also verify that the value of **SERENITY_BUILD** is valid.
In a 64-bit machine, if qemu was installed in the default location you shouldn't need to alter anything.
- Execute `serenity/Meta/CLion/run.sh`.
### Note on filesystems
WSL2 filesystem performance for IO heavy tasks (such as compiling a large C++ project) on the host Windows filesystem is terrible.
This is because WSL2 runs as a Hyper-V virtual machine and uses the 9p file system protocol to access host windows files, over Hyper-V sockets.
For a more in depth explaination of the technical limitations of their approach, see [this issue on the WSL github](https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4197#issuecomment-604592340)
The recommendation from the Microsoft team on that issue is:
> [I]f it's at all possible, store your projects in the Linux file system in WSL2.
In practice, this means cloning and building the project to somewhere such as `/home/username/serenity`.
If you're using the native Windows QEMU binary from the above steps, QEMU is not able to access the ext4 root partition of the
WSL2 installation without proper massaging. To avoid this, you might copy or symlink `Build/_disk_image` and `Build/Kernel/Kernel` to a native Windows partition (e.g. `/mnt/c`) before running the QEUMU launch commands in `Meta/CLion/run.sh`.