Docker Engine on WSL + Visual Studio 2019 without Docker Desktop

You maybe need to configure WSL to limit processor and memory usage.

This can be done with the file .wslconfig in your Windows profile folder (%USERPROFILE%).

[wsl2]
 memory=4GB # Limits VM memory in WSL 2 up to 4GB
 processors=2 # Makes the WSL 2 VM use two virtual processors

See Microsoft documentation.

From Docker documentation :

sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg lsb-release
 curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
 echo \
  "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(lsb_release -cs) stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
 sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io
 sudo docker run hello-world

You will have an error here :

 Docker service didn’t start automatically in WSL, even if you reboot Ubuntu, since systemd is not enabled.

You can start it manually :

sudo service docker start

Allow Docker without sudo (see Docker post installation documentation)

sudo groupadd docker
 sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
 newgrp docker
 docker run hello-world

sudo apt update
 sudo apt install docker-compose

This docker-compose.yml is configured to start a Kafka environment and the listener application. If you open it, you will see the listener configuration :

services:
  listener:
  container_name: listener
  image: ${DOCKER_REGISTRY-}listener
  depends_on:
  - rest-proxy
  build:
  context: .
  dockerfile: KafkaListener/Dockerfile
  ports:
  - "80"
  environment:
  ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT: Development
  ASPNETCORE_URLS: http://+:80
  ConsumerConfig__BootstrapServers: kafka:9092
  ConsumerConfig__GroupId: wsl-consumer
  ListenerConfig__Host: http://172.17.0.1:5002
  ListenerConfig__Route: /hello
  ListenerConfig__Topic: hello-topic

The address 172.17.0.1 is the address of Docker.

So let’s start the environment:

docker-compose up -d --build && docker attach listener

Now let’s start the application to rename :

dotnet run --project ./WslApplication/WslApplication.csproj --urls "http://172.17.0.1:5002"

Ok, now we send a message to Kafka :

To communicate with the container from Windows, you must use this address [::1].

 You should see this message in both applications :

Open the solution DockerWSL.sln, and choose the WSL profile :

 If you have this error, you have to select Ubuntu as the default WSL :

wsl -s Ubuntu-20.04

You may have also those errors :

Just click install and it will work.

Now you can work and debug directly with Visual Studio.

So, the solution work and it’s easy to implement.

The downside I see is that we lose the concept of “Works on my machine” since the application no longer works on Docker but on WSL.

Source: Medium - Frcs6

The Tech Platform

www.thetechplatform.com