Setting up Rsync on Windows

At the time of writing this how-to, to use the Symitar Explorer - Remote Syms feature we require the use of common Unix utility called rsync to manage the local directories for each Sym which we refer to as "semi-virtual" workspaces.

Looking for additional context into the design decision? Providing rich language support for a third-party language like PowerOn requires something called the Language Server Protocol (LSP). Unfortunately, VS Code doesn't currently support LSP over "virtual workspaces" (Issue #1264) which is the ideal design choice to bridge the gap between your local workstation and the Symitar host - forcing us to find an alternative. That alternative, was simply us managing a copy of the select remote directories you'd like for each Sym on your local machine and keeping them up to date using, you guessed it, rsync.

Getting started

Now, we're aware that most of the Symitar developers out there are on a Windows workstation and rsync isn't something that's natively available. Sure there's technically a way to get it running using Windows binaries but fortunately for us Microsoft gave us the ability to install a Linux distribution of our choosing through something called Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Already have WSL working on your machine? Feel free to skip down to Verifying the Remote Sym dependencies if you already have a Linux distribution created via WSL or if you're comfortable with handling the deps yourself.

Installing WSL

We recommend you follow the latest installation guide, Install WSL, by Microsoft. The distribution you choose shouldn't matter as long as it comes with rsync already installed.

Installing SSHPass

In order to not prompt you 1,000 times while we manage the synchronization between your Remote Sym and local directory, we use another popular utility called sshpass. The following steps walk you thought how to set this up on Ubuntu.

Update & install via APT

Using Advanced Packaging Tool (APT), make sure your sytem has been updated with the lastet packages via the following commands:

• First make sure you're in your wsl instance:

Running the wsl command from a PowerShell prompt in Windows 11.

• Next, from the $ prompt, go ahead and update your apt packages:

Running the sudo apt update command within a WSL Ubuntu instance.

• After typing in your Ubutu user password, you should see something like the following:

Output after running sudo apt update on WSL Ubuntu instance.

• Finally run sudo apt install sshpass (if you've already installed, the output will look similar to the following)

Running sudo apt install sshpass on WSL Ubuntu instance.

Verifying the Remote Sym dependencies

After installation or if you have an existing WSL distribution you're working with, here are the simple commands to check if you meet the dependencies.

Is Rsync installed?

Run which rsync to confirm it exists in your /bin directory.

Running which rsync on a WSL Ubuntu instance.

Is SSHPass installed?

Run which sshpass to confirm it exists in your /bin directory.

Running which sshpass on a WSL Ubuntu instance.