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Running on WSLg

This page is dedicated to running SmartGit on Windows Subsystem for Linux with GUI (WSLg). WSLg allows running GUI based Linux applications, such as SmartGit, in emulated Linux environment on Windows. This is convenient if you need to mix Windows and Linux development and prefer Windows as main OS.

Note

You’ll need Win10 update 21H2 or a recent Win11 or higher, because older versions will only support plain WSL.

WSLg installation

Run this command in administrator commandline:

wsl --install -d Ubuntu

After a Windows reboot, a console starts automatically to continue installing Ubuntu, especially to create a user account. Also, find the new Start menu item Ubuntu to launch it.

Tip

Run these commands in WSL terminal to make sure that WSLg and the GUI, especially GTK3, works as intended:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install gedit
gedit
You should see gedit window open in your Windows. If this doesn’t happen, then either you don’t have WSLg or it’s broken in some way.

SmartGit installation

Download SmartGit to WSLg
- On Windows, navigate to the SmartGit download
- Click Download for Linux
- Start Ubuntu from Windows Start menu. This will open a console, you’ll use it later.
- In your Windows Explorer, notice Linux item on side panel.
- Navigate to location where you want to install SmartGit on Linux, such as
  Linux\Ubuntu\home\user
  (replace user with your configured Ubuntu username)
- Copy the .tar.gz file you downloaded to this folder in Windows Explorer

In Ubuntu on Windows, run these commands:

cd ~
If you downloaded SmartGit to a different folder, adjust this step.
tar xvzf smartgit-linux-21_2_2.tar.gz
Replace filename with the one you downloaded.
This will extract smartgit folder from the archive.
sudo apt update
A preparation for sudo apt install steps.

sudo apt install libgtk-3-0
SmartGit is a GTK based program. GTK is installed in most GUI based Linux, but not on WSL. Without GTK installed, SmartGit will fail to start with error like

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:566)
    at com.syntevo.QBootLoader.main(SourceFile:115)
Caused by: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Could not load SWT library. Reasons:
    Can't load library: /home/user/.smartgit/21.2/swt.tmp/libswt-pi4-gtk-4946r10.so
    Can't load library: /home/user/.smartgit/21.2/swt.tmp/libswt-pi4-gtk.so
    Can't load library: /home/user/.smartgit/21.2/swt.tmp/libswt-pi4.so
    no swt-pi4-gtk-4946r10 in java.library.path: [/usr/java/packages/lib, /usr/lib64, /lib64, /lib, /usr/lib]
    no swt-pi4-gtk in java.library.path: [/usr/java/packages/lib, /usr/lib64, /lib64, /lib, /usr/lib]
    no swt-pi4 in java.library.path: [/usr/java/packages/lib, /usr/lib64, /lib64, /lib, /usr/lib]

    at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Library.java:348)
    at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Library.java:257)
    at org.eclipse.swt.internal.gtk.OS.<clinit>(OS.java:96)
    at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Converter.java:209)
    at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Converter.java:155)
    at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.<clinit>(Display.java:165)
    at smartgit.IV.a(SourceFile:63)
    at smartgit.abZ.a(SourceFile:161)
    at com.syntevo.smartgit.p.a(SourceFile:384)
    at com.syntevo.smartgit.p.a(SourceFile:283)
    at smartgit.acE.b(SourceFile:68)
    at com.syntevo.smartgit.SmartGit.main(SourceFile:11)
    ... 5 more

At this point you should be able to run SmartGit from command line and you may skip to step 3. To create a link to SmartGit in your Windows Start menu, proceed with following steps:

sudo apt install xdg-utils
A package necessary for next step. Installed by default on most Linux distros. For some reason, not present by default on WSL.
sudo mkdir /usr/share/desktop-directories
A workaround for Linux bug, see https://askubuntu.com/questions/405800. Without it, you might have error No writable system menu directory found in next step.
sudo ./smartgit/bin/add-menuitem.sh
This will let Windows know about SmartGit. Right after running this command, your Windows Start menu will get new entry SmartGit (Ubuntu). Note that you need to run it with sudo, because Windows only picks up info from system /usr/share/applications and ignores user ~/.local/share/applications.

Run and set up SmartGit
- Run SmartGit (Ubuntu) in Windows Start menu or directly from WSL command line using smartgit/bin/smartgit.sh.
  Note
  If you are not able to finish the Setup due to a missing machine-id file and sudo apt update does not resolve your problem, you can create the file from command line:
  sudo systemd-machine-id-setup
- When asked for license, know that you can pick your Windows license from inside WSLg. To do that, navigate to /mnt/c/Users/win-user/AppData/Roaming/syntevo/SmartGit/22.1/license
  (here, win-user is your Windows username, and 22.1 with your SmartGit version. Just use directory browser button)
- From this point, you can use SmartGit as usual.

Workarounds for WSLg issues in SmartGit

For SmartGit 23.1 and older:

On some machines, SmartGit could fail to check for updates
Only happens on some machines. Disabling Windows Firewall seems to help. More information is needed.
SmartGit UI uses too small font with 150% Windows zoom level
You can workaround this problem by removing the leading # from the next line from smartgit.sh:
```
#export GDK_DPI_SCALE=1.5
```
SmartGit doesn’t show “resize” cursor when trying to resize panes
This is because in WSL, cursors are not installed by default. Fix it with:
```
sudo apt install adwaita-icon-theme-full
```

For SmartGit 22.1 and older:

SmartGit fails to install updates
The workaround is to run SmartGit from terminal, not from Windows shortcut. After updates are installed, you can use shortcut again.
SmartGit windows do not have minimize/maximize buttons
This is due to how WSLg is configured by default. Run these commandline commands to fix for all apps:
```
sudo systemd-machine-id-setup
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout "menu:minimize,maximize,close"
```
SmartGit UI layout is wrong with >= 200% Windows zoom level
This problem is resolved in SmartGit 23.1 preview
In older versions, you can work around it by adding this line in ~/.config/smartgit/smartgit.vmoptions:
```
-Dswt.autoScale=100
```
Windows zoom level is configured at Windows > Settings > System > Display > Scale.

Fractional scaling might cause crashes on startup
In the smartgit.sh you will find these lines:

if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" = "wayland" ]; then
   # comment the next line if you have problems with incorrectly zoomed drawing (see https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=574182)
   export GDK_BACKEND=x11
fi

Try changing the first line to

if [ "$XDG_SESSION_TYPE" = "" ]; then

Other WSLg issues

VirtualBox

Installing WSLg also installs Windows Hyper-V, which is required for WSLg to run. Unfortunately, having Hyper-V installed might cause VirtualBox VMs to fail in various ways: they might crash, hang, etc.

The workaround is to create an additional Windows boot configuration. This way, you can select either Hyper-V or no Hyper-V on every boot. Run these commands on Windows administrator commandline:

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Win11 + Hyper-V"
bcdedit /set {current} hypervisorlaunchtype off

No internet / network after installing WSL

This seems to be happening on some machines, but not the others. For me, the following fixed the problem:

Press Win+R and run ncpa.cpl. This will show your network adapters.
Right-click adapter you’re using for internet and select Diagnose.
Agree to reset adapter and reboot when suggested.

Performance problems when running remote SmartGit from within WSLg

We have been reported significant UI performance problems when running SmartGit remotely from within WSLg by following setup:

In a bash prompt in WSLg (i.e. graphics enabled), ssh -Y to a remote computer
Start SmartGit

This can be worked around by following setup:

Disable graphics in .wslconf
Install Xlaunch, following these instructions
ssh -Y to remote computer
Start SmartGit

Known problems when accessing hosted-mounted repositories

Accessing host-mounted repositories, i.e., accessing repositories from within WSL that are stored on the host and accessed by /mnt/... is strongly discouraged because it is known to cause several problems:

Various Git configuration options from the host may result in confusing behavior in WSL (or vice versa).
File monitoring does not work.
The refresh performance is usually degraded.
- This is mainly due to optimizations during .git/index processing, for instance, different timestamp precision on different systems.

Note that many of the issues mentioned above affect any Git client and can be reproduced using git status.

Running on WSLg

Note

WSLg installation

Tip

SmartGit installation

Note

Workarounds for WSLg issues in SmartGit

For SmartGit 23.1 and older:

For SmartGit 22.1 and older:

Other problems

Other WSLg issues

VirtualBox

No internet / network after installing WSL

Performance problems when running remote SmartGit from within WSLg

Known problems when accessing hosted-mounted repositories

Suggested solutions