Hide files and folders in WSL starting with a "." in file explorer

[artorias111]

As explained in the title.
Not any major issue but would be a neat addition if files and folders starting with a "." could be hidden when WSL files are viewed in the file explorer.

[benyaminl]

This's a neat feature tbh.
Waiting it to be implemented on WSL 9P

[Stanzilla]

That's more like an anti-feature to me, every dev will probably want to see dotfiles.

[benyaminl]

That's more like an anti-feature to me, every dev will probably want to see dotfiles.

How about show hidden files, It should be the win win solution for it. As it's normal on Linux

[Biswa96]

WSL P9 mount shows dot files by default.

[benyaminl]

Yeah I got it, I mean this is a feature that is great to hide . files, and show file when enable hidden files.

[Biswa96]

Why do you want to hide a file or folder (unless you have something to really hide 😏)? Many programs save configuration in dot files.

[benyaminl]

No, nothing, it's just as the OP/TS stated, I just think it's a good idea to start with, because with ls we can't see dot files, and that's normal on *NIX right. Also on normal file explorer on any distro did have this feature baked in.

[nmsobri]

this should be a feature. why want to hide dot files? ever used linux? without the ability to hide dot files, it become so cluttered in the file manager.. i dont want to see dot files all the time.. if i want to see it, i can easily see it using terminal

[cdsantiago]

yes please, I want to be able to hide .files in windows explorer

[nbx0]

+1

[trane77]

That's more like an anti-feature to me, every dev will probably want to see dotfiles.

Not in windows explorer!
At least, not always

[clchen-arcadia]

Yes, I would really like to see this. And presumably you would be able to use the checkbox to toggle whether or not to show these hidden files. Right now in WSL it would appear you cannot even assign the 'hidden' attribute to any files.

[trane77]

I think that there are many ways to approach this, basically the "issue" comes from how hidden files are managed by Windows & "Linux" filesystems:

• the first stores the hidden attribute in each file's metadata,
• the latter sees any file with a leading dot filename, as hidden.

My personal opinion, not knowing the actual architecture, is to add an adapter in a layer close to the Windows kernel (if not inside he kernel), in order to make the change transparent to any software, which will see the file as a regular Windows file with it's attributes.
The other path is to edit every single software interacting with the filesystem, to address this difference, leaving to each developer/software house the implementation...

Ideally, I would do the first without any doubt...keeping an eye on file watchers: this logic should not be heavy, or it may slow down I/O operations when applied to large repos.

Cheers

[Wakeelfahmed]

A needed feature (to hide file/folders & then toggle to see them), I will also like the ability to change the icon of folders