Microsoft announced the start of testing a system for running Linux containers on Windows, implemented based on the WSL layer (Windows Subsystem for Linux). The toolkit provides a standard wslc command line interface and API for creating, deploying and running Linux-based containers from a Windows environment, as well as for accessing running containers from Windows. Container functionality is included in the experimental release of WSL 2.9.3.
Key features of WSLC (WSL Containers):
- Operations for managing the lifecycle of containers, such as creating, starting, stopping, exporting, cleaning, and inspection.
- Limiting CPU and memory consumption of individual containers.
- Building, loading, sending, importing, saving, checking system images. Commands for viewing lists of available images. Batch operations with several images at once. Ability to package multiple images into one tar archive.
- Creation and management of virtual networks. Connecting containers to multiple networks. Create network aliases and your own network types. Network port forwarding
- Creating, viewing and deleting partitions. Working with virtual disks (VHD).
- Providing access to GPUs from containers and providing libraries for GPU operation by unprivileged users.
- Creating sessions as needed, assigning names to sessions, customizable storage location.
- SDK with API for automating work with containers from programs in C++ and C#/WinRT.
- The “wslc logs” command for viewing and retrieving data from logs. Display statistics about the operation of the container. Output highlighting in “wslc” utility.
- Integration with MSBuild and CMake.
- Support for management using ADMX group policies.
- Support for the VS Code dev container extension for running and building code under development in a container.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.