Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a compatibility layer for running Linux binary executables natively on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019.

Thanks to this tool, I am happy Windows 10 user since the very beginning of 2019.

So far my experience working with it was painless (after learning some new workflow concepts during initial configuration but that's something for another note 😉).

Recently, I have started having issue by getting EACCESS errors when I was installing any new package via npm. It was happening only if I ran some npm command earlier (e.g. npm run dev or something).

It is caused by file watcher implementation of VSCode.

Solution

There are 2 ways to solve this issue - restart your Visual Studio Code editor (😒) or find in your IDE preferences an option:

remote.WSL.fileWatcher.polling

and set its value to true.

And that's it! You're welcome 👨‍🏫.

If you're working on large workspace, you might also want to increase the polling interval config option (remote.WSL.fileWatcher.pollingInterval) and also exclude some folders that doesn't need to be watched (files.watcherExclude config option).

If you're an active Windows Insider member you can also install WSL 2 which doesn't have this problem at all.

I've found this solution here.

-- ł.