Issues with WSL and PHP scripts

bowrilla · November 20, 2019

Has anyone ran into issues with some complex php applications and developing plugins under Windows? I usually run my servers under WSL (either Debian or Ubuntu) with a classical stack consisting of Apache2, PHP7.x, MySQL and usually also node, python and ruby while either mounting the Host-FS in the WSL or mounting the WSL-FS as a network drive on the Host. It used to work fine for weeks and months during the last project but since I started a new plugin project in the same environment the weirdness started: cloning existing plugins into the corresponding folder worked - creating a new folder and even copying existing known working files into that folder didn't. Changing a class name in a working plugin rendered it non-working even though it should have worked because that class name only appears in 5 places. It wasn't about access rights, since even the ultimate "I'm out of ideas" move - chmod -R 777 * - didn't work. Now, cloning that modified plugin into a HyperV VM worked so it wasn't about the modifications.

I first thought it was some mess up in my stack so I purged the system from it and reinstalled everything. Nada. I deleted the former test installation (grudginly due to all the dummy data I uploaded) and setup a new installation of that application. Nada. I set up a complete new WSL environment. Nada.

After 2 1/2 days I'm still not sure what the heck is going on or rather wrong here but it has to be something around the WSL since the HyperV VM works with the same damn code.

This is not a thread asking for support, since I managed to find a way to keep going witht he project and not wasting more time on finding the problem (for now). I just wonder if I'm the only one running into stupid issues with the WSL or if that's a common thing. The WSL is such an amazing idea but it obviously fails in many places. I was so happy not having to switch between various OSs and having a Linux shell just a shortcut away, it's so convenient not having to waste storage space, memory and cpu cores on VMs but apparently you still have to go that route unless you want to go the Docker route.

Sorry, if this was a bit ranty ...