Open Visual Studio (Not Visual Studio Code) from the ubuntu bash terminal on windows

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to open Visual Studio (Not Visual Studio Code) from the ubuntu bash terminal on windows .

Opening Visual Studio Code just works fine but I couldn't find a way on how I could actually open Visual Studio from the command line.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

It is possible to refer to anything in the Windows file system from inside WSL. However, understand that, since Visual Studio is a Windows exclusive application, it will run in the context of your host Windows OS, not the Ubuntu guest OS. By contrast, Visual Studio Code is a Linux-native application; so it can run in either context.

Try this:

’/mnt/c/Windows/System32/cmd.exe /c “/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2019/Community/Common7/IDE/devenv.exe”'

If this works, you can save the command as an alias in your .bashrc

References:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/interop
• https://medium.com/@heinrich10/launching-windows-application-on-windows-subsystem-for-linux-wsl-60cc2c165029