Does not work when installed by npm on WSL

[x11x]

In WSL, you can use native windows executables and native linux executables side by side in the same shell. When you install linux node/npm and install clipboardy, it doesn't work as it thinks its on Linux and tries to use xsel, but there is no X server (unless the user installed one).

I had a go at adding support for this in #52 but have closed that as its not a complete solution. WSL support is simple in theory. WSL can run native windows binaries and I can confirm that the fallback executables provided by this module work inside WSL.

The trick is, native windows binaries need to be on a letter drive to run (e.g. C: drive).

This is where things start to get complicated with different paths and environments. WSL has its own filesystem but can also access the standard letter drives under /mnt/c and so on. When clipboardy is installed in WSL, npm installs those .exe files in the fallback directory but these are in a filesystem that is internal to WSL and not accessible to the rest of Windows. Like I said, they need to be on a letter drive where windows can access them.

To make it work when installed in WSL:

1. clipboard_ARCH.exe needs to be installed somewhere accessible to windows - maybe %APPDATA%/clipboardy/ or something like that

   • how will this be installed?
     a) programmatically
     b) programmatically but with a special command (e.g. npm run install-fallback-exes [LOCATION])
     c) just tell people in the readme: if you want access to windows clipboard in WSL, download these exes, install into your PATH as 'clipboard.exe', then clipboardy will just look for clipboard.exe if its available when on WSL
   • if we are going to install programmatically, some tricks are needed to convert this path to something WSL understands (i.e. '/mnt/c/Users/USERNAME/AppData/...'). So get process.env['APPDATA'], parse it using require('path').win32 API, change 'C:' to '/mnt/c' or whatever drive letter it is, turn the whole thing into a posix path...

2. need to tell clipboardy to use lib/windows.js when on WSL (since sys.platform === 'linux' it currently tries to use lib/linux.js)

   • (this is what I implemented in my closed PR and is a simple 1 liner using sindresorhus/is-wsl module)

3. also need to tell lib/windows.js to look for those executables in the place we installed them earlier, or put that location on the PATH. It will not work if it just tries to run the executables in their current location wherever the node modules were installed.

---

IssueHunt Summary

g-rath has been rewarded.

Backers (Total: $36.00)

• sindresorhus ($36.00)

Submitted pull Requests

• #59 Add support for WSL

---

Tips

• Checkout the Issuehunt explorer to discover more funded issues.
• Need some help from other developers? Add your repositories on IssueHunt to raise funds.

---

IssueHunt has been backed by the following sponsors. Become a sponsor

[issuehunt-oss]

@sindresorhus has funded $36.00 to this issue.

---

• Submit pull request via IssueHunt to receive this reward.
• Want to contribute? Chip in to this issue via IssueHunt.
• Checkout the IssueHunt Issue Explorer to see more funded issues.
• Need help from developers? Add your repository on IssueHunt to raise funds.

[rfgamaral]

The trick is, native windows binaries need to be on a letter drive to run (e.g. C: drive).

Are you sure about this? I just did some debugging on my WSL 1 instance (I don't have WSL2 for testing) and it works fine with a simple change:

1) Initialize a project like this:

/tmp
❯ mkdir clipboard
mkdir: created directory 'clipboard'

/tmp
❯ cd $_

/tmp/clipboard
❯ npm init --yes               
Wrote to /tmp/clipboard/package.json:

{
  "name": "clipboard",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}



/tmp/clipboard
❯ npm i --save clipboardy             
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN [email protected] No description
npm WARN [email protected] No repository field.

+ [email protected]
added 21 packages from 8 contributors and audited 24 packages in 2.721s
found 0 vulnerabilities

2) Add an index.js file with (for testing purposes):

const clipboardy = require('clipboardy');

clipboardy.writeSync('🦄');

3) Change linux in node_modules/clipboardy/index.js line 20 to windows (this is just for testing purposes, not production code).

4) Execute in your shell:

/tmp/clipboard
❯ node index.js

5) Paste (with Ctrl+V or something) into a Windows application and observe clipboardy working.

You can also test the pasting action and you'll see it also works just fine, try it.

I was going to tackle this issue on Issue Hunt but the fix feels quite simple and it's basically point 2 in the original post. I'm not the one who deserves it. Unless I'm missing something here? Perhaps this doesn't quite work on WSL 2?

[issuehunt-oss]

@sindresorhus has rewarded $32.40 to @g-rath. See it on IssueHunt

• 💰 Total deposit: $36.00
• 🎉 Repository reward(0%): $0.00
• 🔧 Service fee(10%): $3.60