Using Windows Bash for Python Development

With Windows 10, Microsoft has introduced the “Windows Subsystem for Linux”. Technnically, it’s not Linux at all, but it does provide an actual bash shell, and access to much (all) of the packages available in Ubuntu Linux, providing a very Linux-like environment.

If you run Windows 10, but want to be able to work in an environment that is very much like Linux (and the OS-X command line) Windows-bash may be a good options for you.

Installing the System

Here is a nice HowTo:

http://www.groovypost.com/howto/install-and-start-bash-in-windows-10-anniversary-update/

And here are the “official” docs from the Microsoft Developer’s network:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/commandline/wsl/about

Installing / running Python

To use python from within the bash shell, you probably want a “linux” python, rather than the native Windows installer. Unfortunately, the Ubuntu version that Windows Bash is hooked up to does not natively have the latest python version -:(