kmmiles / ubuntu-xenial-wsl

An example of how to easily build and install custom WSL2 distributions

ubuntu-xenial-wsl

This repo serves as an example of how to easily build and install your own WSL2 distributions. WSL2 distributions are in fact containers, so we build them with docker or podman, export it as a tarball, and import them with wsl --import.

• This example leverages Github Actions to perform the build, so a local install of docker is not required.
• We also bundle a wsl-install.bat script inside the releases to make installation simple.

Install

Download the latest release zipfile, extract it and run wsl-install.bat. Once Windows Terminal is restarted, you should see a new entry for the distribution.

Modifying

Fork the repo, make any changes you want and push them. A test build will automatically kick off in the "Actions" tab. When it looks good, click the "Releases" link on the right and "Draft a New Release". Create a new version tag (e.g. v1.0.1) and click "Publish Release". If the build is succesful, the zifile will automatically be generated and attached to the release.

Testing and building locally

You need docker or podman installed.

To build: ./bin/build

To create a release: ./bin/release

To test the container: ./bin/shell