[MANAGER] Manage WSL packages from Windows

[ppvnf]

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)

[MrStanDu33]

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]

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 🫤

1. Get list of available WSL distros (wsl -l)
2. For each distro, check for all available package managers (e.g. apt, pac, snap, flatpak, etc.)... and/or in the future use apx since 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 of apx into each WSL distro. I believe apx development is done, but I'll double check.

(edited since I was confused on the status of apx vs another command they have)

[Andrew-J-Larson]

Yep, apx appears 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 UI

[Andrew-J-Larson]

Of course though, would need to include a warning about installing vso in 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]

The instructions for using apx on other distros is available on its source page:

• https://github.com/Vanilla-OS/apx?tab=readme-ov-file#instructions-for-using-apx-in-other-distributions

[Andrew-J-Larson]

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, or apx already installed in one of their distros, probably wouldn't want to overwrite it).

[Andrew-J-Larson]

Another option might be upm (universal package manager), but it was last updated 2 years ago

[marticliment]

I will take this suggestions into account

[rnett]

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]

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.