Gitui takes a long time to start under Windows Linux Subsystem

[tbee]

Describe the bug
Under WLS you need to (unexpectingly?) use the Window's gitui.exe. It eventually comes up, but takes 20+ seconds to do so.

To Reproduce

1. Start a WSL shell
2. Run 'gitui'

Expected behavior
'Lightning fast' startup ;-)

Context

• Windows 11, Ubuntu 20_02.2 LTS
• GitUI 0.22.1

Additional context
Not sure if gitui is intended to be used in this setting, but alas.

[tbee]

I'd rate the priority low, because it is a bit of an exotic combination; Linux under Windows. I was amazed it ran at all. And you can always use gitui in a dos window or powershell, where it works perfectly (which is a feat on its own). I was just experimenting.

[ajcarvajal]

Git operations are notoriously slow on WSL. The workaround is to use git.exe from the windows host. That doesn't seem very feasible here as gitui uses libgit2, not git from the host

[extrawurst]

If that’s the case it could be feasible to report upstream to the libgit2 team

[wojtha]

@tbee I bet that the main problem here is that you use the shared home folder under /mnt/c. Sharing to WSL runs over some protocol which is very very slow. Try to move away from the shared windows folder to your WSL home folder under /home which uses ext4 file system. You'll get close to the native linux speed.

[tbee]

@wojtha I am running it in WSL home folder, that is not on /mnt/c.

[pm100]

I use gitui on WSL all the time and it is very fast but you need to install the linux musl build in /usr/local/bin

get it here https://github.com/extrawurst/gitui/releases/download/v0.22.1/gitui-linux-musl.tar.gz

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity half a year. It will be closed in 14 days if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.