Tutorial - WSL Install and Visual Studio Instructions

Installing WSL

• Enable virtualization in Windows

  • Open the BIOS of your machine and enable virtualization. This will look a bit different for everyone, but there should be an option hidden in the BIOS somewhere to enable virtualization.
  • Open the Turn Windows Features on or off menu
    • Check the “Virtual Machine Platform” box

• Install all the relevant components in WSL

  • Type wsl --install

  • In Powershell or Terminal on Windows, type in wsl --version

  • You should be able to see that everything is installed correctly

  • After opening a WSL instance in Powershell/Terminal, install needed packages for our class using: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade THEN sudo apt install gcc clang build-essential gdb git valgrind zip rsync

Visual Studio

• Check the “Linux and embedded development with C++” box in the VS Installer

• When creating a new VS project, use the following filters and choose the correct Console Application project

Note!

You may need to change your starter file from a .cpp file to a .c file, and include stdio.h rather than cstdio.

• Go to the Project properties and ensure the platform is set to Active(x64), and under General, for the Platform Toolset option, choose **WSL2 Clang Toolset

You should now be ready to compile using WSL2 and Clang/GCC in Visual Studio!