Thanks wsltty folks!

I use this blog to post small programming projects that implement some aspect of a subject that I'm interested in. This post is different.

The computer that I use for development uses Windows 11. For most of my programming work, I use WSL2. Last week, Windows update KB5032190 caused havoc with several apps that I use regularly: VSCode, wsltty, Task Scheduler, and Windows itself.

I use VSCode as my IDE. It operates with WSL via an exposed port. VSCode is actually running in Windows, but connects to WSL so it can run Linux compilers, apps, etc. After the update, it refused to connect to WSL. I fixed this problem the way many Windows app problems are solved; I deleted VSCode and reinstalled. After that it worked. I have no idea why it failed initially.

I run a backup program every night at 1:00 am. It is launched by the Windows Task Scheduler. The actual program is ancient. It was written in perl about ten years ago. It has been operating flawlessly on different systems for that time. Last week, Task Scheduler began to randomly skip launching the task. No errors or any events are reported, other apps were launched, but the backup app was simply ignored. I submitted feedback to Microsoft on this issue. I haven't received a reply yet.

After the update, icons mysteriously disappeared from my taskbar. Clicking on the blank space where the icon should be will bring up the window. This has supposedly been fixed in the Windows Insider channel. I'm hesitant to join the Insider program because I worry that I'll be facing broken apps on a regular basis.

wsltty is my go-to terminal for Linux. Its roots are in mintty, a terminal emulator for Cygwin. It's a simple terminal window that behaves like a Linux terminal. When wsltty began to fail, I found several viable workarounds, but I still preferred wsltty. I submitted an issue on the wsltty GitHub page. It quickly became apparent that many other suffered the same problem. Some people dove into the problem and located where it arose. Within a week, the good folks who support wsltty provided an updated version. This is the sort of thing that makes open source so great!

THANK YOU WSLTTY FOLKS!!!