I've been developing directly on Windows, but my system is getting cluttered with installations and dependencies. I'm considering moving my development environment to WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). However, I'm unsure how to test applications that need to run on Windows without using a heavyweight Windows VM. Is there a more efficient way to handle this? Do most developers just go ahead and use a VM, or is there a lighter solution?
5 Answers
That's a good point! Since WSL allows you to access the Windows file system, why not just develop everything in Linux and then switch to Windows for testing? You can avoid the cluttering issue by packaging your executables when you’re ready to test.
Why not just run your app directly on Windows? It's simple and avoids overhead of a VM.
WSL runs on top of Windows, so you already have Windows available to test your applications. You might want to develop in a Linux environment but run tests directly on the Windows host. It doesn't seem necessary to spin up a full VM for testing when you can access everything from WSL directly.
Have you considered using dev containers? They let you maintain a clean environment for your installs, and you can switch between developing in Linux or Windows easily. After that, just test it on a clean Windows setup and you'll be good to go!
It sounds a bit unconventional—you want to compile in Linux but run in Windows? Depending on your tools, you might be able to compile your code in WSL and access the files directly in Windows. Just keep in mind that you might lose some debugging features this way.
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