Windows development environment
This guide explains how to prepare a Windows machine to run
SPLENT.
The development environment relies on WSL, Docker Desktop, and GitHub SSH access.
Table of contents
Install WSL
First install Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu.
Open PowerShell and run:
wsl --install
After installation, reboot your computer if required.
Once installed, you can open your Linux environment in several ways:
- Search Ubuntu in the Start Menu
- Run from PowerShell:
wsl
This opens the Linux shell where all SPLENT commands must be executed.
All SPLENT commands must run inside WSL, not in PowerShell.
Install Docker Desktop
Download and install Docker Desktop for Windows.
https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/
After installation, enable integration with WSL.
Open Docker Desktop and go to:
Settings → Resources → WSL Integration
Enable integration with your Linux distribution (for example Ubuntu).
Verify Docker works inside WSL:
docker --version
docker ps
Configure Git
Before running SPLENT, ensure that your Git configuration file exists inside WSL.
In some Windows/WSL setups, Docker may mount .gitconfig as a directory instead of a file, which causes Git to fail inside containers.
To avoid this issue, create the file manually and configure your identity.
Run inside WSL:
rm -rf ~/.gitconfig
touch ~/.gitconfig
git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "your_email@example.com"
Verify that .gitconfig is a file:
ls -l ~/.gitconfig
It should appear as a regular file, not a directory.
Once this is done, you can continue with the SPLENT installation guide