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[MANAGER] Manage WSL packages from Windows #1490
Description
This is the same proposal as #1241, right?
possibly, but here he mentions snap and flatpak.
Maybe an integration with WSL would be nice as well
Originally posted by pedronovaes (@ppvnf) in #1307 (comment)
Activity
[-]Support WSL pkg managers (such as APT)[/-][+][MANAGER] WSL Package Managers[/+]MrStanDu33 commentedon Jan 11, 2024
I think it could be nice to access all package managers in each distros from this tool !
Not sure tho how it could be implemented in the UI itself 🫤
Andrew-J-Larson commentedon Jan 19, 2024
wsl -l)Foreach distro, check for all available package managers (e.g.apt,pac,snap,flatpak, etc.)... and/or in the future useapxsince Vanilla OS plans to make it a distro independent all-in-one package manager, which would cut down a lot of work that would be needed for Winget UI)a. If not using
apx, it would need to manually gather lists from each package manager and execute their commands.b. If using
apx, checking updates, and updating would be very simple to implement. The only little downside is a one-time install ofapxinto each WSL distro. I believeapxdevelopment is done, but I'll double check.(edited since I was confused on the status of
apxvs another command they have)Andrew-J-Larson commentedon Jan 19, 2024
Yep,
apxappears to be stable at version 2.3.0 (at time of writing) and completely distro independent, so we should probably look at integrating support for that through Winget UIAndrew-J-Larson commentedon Jan 19, 2024
Of course though, would need to include a warning about installing
vsoin each distro... and probably want more delicate control for any arch based distros, since you don't always want to upgrade everything there...Andrew-J-Larson commentedon Jan 19, 2024
The instructions for using
apxon other distros is available on its source page:Andrew-J-Larson commentedon Jan 19, 2024
Ah wait, reading more into
apx, just realized it would just manage specific subsystems, but either way most of the work is done, just would have to fork the software, make changes so that interacts with the distro that it's in (rather than an assumed subsystem), and then things should work just fine... (but if someone has vanilla os as a WSL distro, orapxalready installed in one of their distros, probably wouldn't want to overwrite it).Andrew-J-Larson commentedon Jan 19, 2024
Another option might be
upm(universal package manager), but it was last updated 2 years agomarticliment commentedon Jan 19, 2024
I will take this suggestions into account
rnett commentedon Mar 27, 2026
Even if distro package managers aren't included (or aren't included initially), supporting ecosystem package managers that are already supported on windows (npm, cargo, pip, etc) would still be extremely useful.
sduquette-devolutions commentedon May 5, 2026
We have not officially announced it yet but we now build a Linux (and MacOS) version of UniGetUI. We also added support for many Linux package managers including apt, dnf, pacman, flatpak and snapcraft. And UniGetUI works from WSL.
https://github.com/Devolutions/UniGetUI/releases/tag/v2026.1.8
I am closing this issue as the original request is implemented. Please open new issues if you encounter problems or if want to request package managers that we are not currently supporting.
rnett commentedon May 5, 2026
I can't speak for the others in this thread, but this isn't what I was looking for. I want to run one app, in Windows, and be able to manage both Windows and WSL deps. This seems like a large step in the that direction but still requires using and managing two separate apps. Should I create a separate issue for that?
[-][MANAGER] WSL Package Managers[/-][+][MANAGER] Manage WSL packages from Windows[/+]sduquette-devolutions commentedon May 5, 2026
Thanks for your response Ryan, I reread the thread and other participants requested the same thing. I changed the issue title and reopened it.
dominch commentedon Jun 22, 2026
hello, I found this thread and I'm looking at same thing.
for now I need to manually update my debian sitting in wsl, just by login as root and make apt update && apt upgrade (or with nala command, bit nicer apt).
It would be awesome to get this functionality in UniGetUi, my wsl is usually up and running in background, so it's quite easy to detect it and try to get packages list. Looking forward for this here.
dominch commentedon Sep 16, 2026
any update regarding this?