WSL: Selected directory is not a valid home for SDK

[ncs-pl]

Describe the bug
Unable to setup Elixir SDK and Erlang SDK when IntelliJ is on Windows 10 and SDKs in WSL.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Download erlang and elixir in WSL
2. Try to import SDK in "Project structure"

Expected behavior
SDKs should be set up, or even detected automatically

Desktop:

• OS: Windows
• Version 10 (last build)

Erlang:

• Installer kerl (under ~/kerl)
• Version 24.2.1

Elixir:

• Installer kiex
• Version 1.13

Plugin:

• Version 12.2.0

Additional context
I know there are opened issues about WSL but they are old and seem to be outdated

[sh41]

Hi,

I did some digging in the code and I wanted to document what I found in case anyone else is looking into this or #1911 to save them some time.

Currently the SDK checking code is not aware of WSL. The line that checks if the SDK is executable literally just looks for the bin\erl file in the selected path and runs the File.canExecute method to determine whether or not to continue. This is executing in the Windows environment and the executable is on WSL over a network share and so that file is not executable as far as the plugin is concerned.

I had a look at the git4idea plugin in intellij-community to see how they deal with this and it appears that there is a whole different code path for dealing with git under WSL. You can see parts of it here and here. Compare the Local data class with the Wsl data class to see the difference.

So it looks like this functionality is possible, but only by specifically coding for it. Hope that helps anyone looking into this!

[ncs-pl]

Oh I see, thanks for the information.
Do you know if someone started fixing it (any MR)?

[SirMishaa]

Any up ? Really important for me :(

[LijTesfaye]

Any Updates here please? I'm facing the same issue today.

[codecodemelon]

The problem still exist. Hahaha. So Sad!

[odilonjk]

For those who really wanna use IntelliJ, one walkaround is to install IntelliJ on Linux (WSL) instead of Windows.

[noizu]

On Intellij Ultimate you can switch over to remote development sp commands are run in the wsl container's context, allowing ~/.asdf/install/* folders to be used for sdks.

Note, don't use EAP as the plugin isn't build against early access builds and would require custom builds.

On Intellij* windows, the erlang and elixir plugins specifically look for erlc.exe and erl.exe under for erlang and .bat files for elixir and will not properly run commands from within the container context. This seems involved to patch although mix commands will run form the wsl context it seems that some background tasks are executed on the windows runtime and so things will crash/fail if attempting to force into using the *nix binaries. And ofcoures the windows executable will fail to execute from within wsl.