Instructions and tools for setting up Windows 11 + WSL2 as a fast and comfortable development environment.

The idea is simple:

• keep one copy of your repositories on Windows so you can work with your regular IntelliJ installation
• keep a second copy inside Ubuntu/WSL so Docker, Kubernetes, and other Linux-based tooling can access the files with much better performance
• use sync.sh to copy the current branch state and tracked working-tree changes from the Windows repository to the matching repository inside WSL

1. Install Ubuntu with WSL2.
2. Install Docker Engine inside Ubuntu/WSL and configure it as needed.
3. Clone your repositories into a common folder on Windows.
4. Clone the same repositories into a common folder inside Ubuntu/WSL.
5. Copy sync.sh to a suitable location inside your Ubuntu environment.
6. Edit sync.sh and update these paths:
   • SOURCE_DIR: the Windows folder that contains your repositories, for example /mnt/c/Users/<UserName>/IdeaProjects
   • TARGET_DIR: the Ubuntu/WSL folder that contains the matching repositories, for example /home/<UserName>/IdeaProjects
7. In IntelliJ on Windows, go to Settings -> Tools -> External Tools and add a new tool with these values:
   • Program: wsl.exe
   • Arguments: -e /home/<path-to-sync.sh>/sync.sh -v $ProjectFileDir$
   • Working directory: $ProjectFileDir$
8. Optional: go to Settings -> Appearance & Behavior -> Menus and Toolbars and add the external tool to a toolbar for quick access.

• The repositories in Windows and Ubuntu/WSL should have matching folder names, because sync.sh maps them by directory name.
• You do not need to manually add Git remotes from the Ubuntu repositories to the Windows repositories. The script fetches directly from the corresponding Windows repository path.
• When you launch the external tool from IntelliJ, $ProjectFileDir$ is passed to the script. The script extracts the project folder name and syncs that project.
• If you run sync.sh without a project path argument, it will try to sync all repositories under SOURCE_DIR.
• The script syncs the currently checked-out branch and applies tracked working-tree changes. Untracked files and other Git state not covered by git diff are not included.

Once everything is set up, you can:

• run your projects inside Docker on Ubuntu/WSL, which is usually much faster than running them directly from Windows, especially with a local Kubernetes cluster
• work on the code using IntelliJ on Windows, which is often more comfortable than remote development or using IntelliJ natively on Ubuntu
• sync your current tracked working-tree changes to Ubuntu/WSL with a single click; if your running services use live reload tools such as Tilt, this can trigger an automatic reload or rolling update