Calibre on Ubuntu on Windows (WSL)

[botmtl]

Although not apparent at first glance, this picture is calibre running on the Windows Subsystem for Linux.



Why?: Because you can
No really why?: Shit and giggles
Theoretical whys:
- test if your plugin works on linux
- use linux-only plugins (although as of this moment there is only one such plugin - recoll - and it should not be linux-only since recoll is also available on the windows platform).
- (very theoretical) I have a feeling that visual studio ptvsd will work better connecting to a linux remote debugger than it does with the source code on a local windows only environment. (more to come on that later if I manage it).

Environment:
- Windows 14965+
______________________________
/ Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: \
| Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS Release: 16.04 |
\ Codename: xenial /
-------------------------------------

How to do it.

Windows side:
- install VcXsrv (or Xming, but I used VcXrv)

Bash side:
- X11 forwarding

echo "export DISPLAY=:0.0" >> ~/.bashrc

- fix most dbus problems

sudo sed -i 's$<listen>.*</listen>$<listen>tcp:host=localhost,port=0</listen>$' /etc/dbus-1/session.conf

- install calibre
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get install -y calibre

- monotonic patch
for some reason, kovid's monotonic implementation crashes in this environment. replace it with pipy's own monotonic lib.

sudo mv /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/utils/monotonic.py /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/utils/monotonic.bak
sudo mv /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/utils/monotonic.pyc /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/utils/monotonic.bakc
sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/atdt/monotonic/master/monotonic.py
sudo mv monotonic.py /usr/lib/calibre/calibre/utils/monotonic.py

I mostly tested the UI. calibre-viewer, calibre-editor, calibre, etc.

There shouldn't be anything not obvious missing. I chose not to go into the obvious stuff like install xpdf to be able to view pdf files, etc.

*edited*
Forgot a part. I can totally picture Kovid's face twisting in disgust at this "patch".
In /home/wsl/calibre/src/calibre/gui2/__init__.py, comment out line 1159
#fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFD, flags | cloexec_flag | os.O_NONBLOCK)

be warned that this tiny comment is bound to have huge effects on everything from filelocking to leaking file descriptors, to making your harddrive explode (not really).

[kovidgoyal]

Cute -- although the thing I'd be most worried about is filesystem operations. calibre pushes filesystems hard and its quite likely that the filesystem semantics of WSL do not fully match those of linux. So you could end up with data loss/corruption in your calibre library.

Also note that ctypes based implementations of monotonic are *much* slower than native ones, which is why I dont use them.

[botmtl]

So you could end up with data loss/corruption in your calibre library.

anyone running in this environment should expect as much. besides the whole idea of running calibre on wsl is idiotic, but I like to play around in that environment.

I think Microsoft is on to something with wsl. And thankfully they are not google, they won't drop the project in beta and say "oh well, that's that".

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by botmtl

I think Microsoft is on to something with wsl. And thankfully they are not google, they won't drop the project in beta and say "oh well, that's that".

You mean like they didn't drop BOB and WinFS not to mention AutoCollage and SPOT ... I still have the last two -- somewhere

BR

[botmtl]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

You mean like they didn't drop BOB and WinFS not to mention AutoCollage and SPOT ... I still have the last two -- somewhere

BR

Exactly. Even what are obvious failures gets continued support, Microsoft gets a big thumbs up from me for that. If you develop something with their stuff, you are almost certain your project will live out it's usefulness and not just stop working because the backend service got dropped.

Contrast that to google. Let's recap just a few of their dropped projects (this list is by no means complete) :

• Picassa
• Google Helpout
• Google Moderator
• Google Glass
• Google Voice (soon)
• Google Answers
• Lively
• Reader
• Deskbar
• Click-to-Call
• Writely
• Hello
• Send to Phone
• Audio Ads
• Google Catalogs
• Dodgeball
• Ride Finder
• Shared Stuff
• Page Creator
• Marratech
• Goog-411
• Google Labs
• Google Buzz
• Powermeter
• Real Estate
• Google Directory
• Google Sets
• Fast Flip
• Image Labeler
• Aardvark
• Google Gears
• Google Bookmarks
• Google Notebook
• Google Code Search
• News Badges
• Google Related
• Latitude
• Flu Vaccine Finder
• Knol
• One Pass
• Listen
• Slide
• Building Maker
• Meebo
• Talk
• SMS
• iGoogle
• Schemer
• Notifier
• Orkut
• Hotpot
• Music Trends
• Refine
• SearchWiki
• US Government Search
• Sparrow
• Web Accelerator
• Google Accelerator
• Accessible Search
• Google Video
• Helpouts
• Friend Connect
• Google Radio Ads
• Jaiku
• SideWiki
• Wave

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by botmtl

I think Microsoft is on to something with wsl. And thankfully they are not google, they won't drop the project in beta and say "oh well, that's that".

Never say never. MS has dropped it's share of projects.

The one thing MS dropped that caused the most outrage & sadness is when they killed off Clippy.