Saving SETTINGS.JSON starts 11 processes

[vefatica]

Windows Terminal version (or Windows build number)

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro for Workstations 10.0.19042.985 (2009, 20H2) WindowsTerminal: 1.8.1092.0

Other Software

No response

Steps to reproduce

With none of the WSL-related services running, open SETTINGS.JSON vie the settings UI and save it, noting the time.

Observe the processes that were started at that time.

Expected Behavior

Saving SETTINGS.JSON should not cause new processes to start.

Actual Behavior

I saved the file at 11:53:21 and got

Start  Time            Pid       CPU(s)     WS(M)  Name
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
05/24  11:53:21.392  10204        0.156      12.4  LxssManager             LxssManager
05/24  11:53:21.439   6980        0.016      10.9  vmcompute               Hyper-V Host Compute Service
05/24  11:53:21.587   5088        0.078      12.9  hns                     Host Network Service
05/24  11:53:21.604   5204        0.078       7.5  nvagent                 Network Virtualization Service
05/24  11:53:21.622   7548        0.031      18.8  SharedAccess            Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)
05/24  11:53:21.666   9552        0.125       6.7  NetSetupSvc             NetSetupSvc
05/24  11:53:21.457   9376        0.125      19.3  vmwp.exe
05/24  11:53:21.478   3556        0.531     418.0  vmmem
05/24  11:53:22.215  10188        0.016       4.8  wslhost.exe
05/24  11:53:22.222   8164        0.000      10.9  conhost.exe
05/24  11:53:22.235   3612        0.016       8.8  dllhost.exe

That does not happen when I start WindowsTerminal, possibly because I have "Windows.Terminal.Wsl" among "disabledProfileSources". My guess is that it need not happen when the settings are reloaded.

[zadjii-msft]

Huh. Weird that we'd boot WSL even if it is disabled. We probably shouldn't do that.

[vefatica]

Hmmm! Apparently it's happening when the startingDirectory path in my user-defined Ubuntu profile is validated. It doesn't happen if I comment out the startingDirectory. Does it have to do that?

"startingDirectory": "\\\\wsl$\\Ubuntu\\home\\vefatica"

[DHowett]

Fortunately, I think we just removed the code that does that.

[zadjii-msft]

Oh good catch! Turns out, it won't anymore! See #10045. We're gonna stop doing that in 1.9.

[vefatica]

That sounds good.