Is there a workaround to getting gulp-notify to work from LSX?

[alanosman]

Hi everyone,

I have fully migrated my development tools over to Windows LSX, but have one small nitpick.

I'm using gulp with my node app, working on saas and jsx files. Every now and then I make a typo and my gulp watch fails and I don't get notified. This used to obviously work from cygwin.

I did some research and found that Ubuntu requires a package called libnotify-bin to get notifications, but that talks about the native Ubuntu desktop. I went ahead and installed it anyway and it silenced the error I was seeing Could not send message: not found: notify-send, but still no notifications come through to Windows.

I would suspect there is no bridge between Ubuntu's notifications and Windows, right? or is there?

• I'm using Windows 10 Pro, 15063.296, latest production release.
• The relevant lines of code in my gulpfile are:

'use strict';

const chalk         = require('chalk');
const gulp          = require('gulp');
const sass          = require('gulp-sass');
const gutil         = require('gulp-util');
const eslint        = require('gulp-eslint');
const notify        = require('gulp-notify');
const plumber       = require('gulp-plumber');
const requirejs     = require('requirejs');
const buildConfig   = require('./build');

const GULP_WATCH_INTERVAL = 750; // Milliseconds
const GULP_WATCH_OPTS     = { interval: GULP_WATCH_INTERVAL };

const sassCompiler = (src, dest) =>
    gulp.src(src)
        .pipe(plumber({
            errorHandler:  notify.onError('SAAS error: <%= error.message %>')
        }))
        .pipe(sass({
            outputStyle:     'compressed',
            errLogToConsole: true,
        }))
        .pipe(gulp.dest(dest));

gulp.task('sass', () =>
    sassCompiler('.//sass/**/*.scss', './public/css'));

• I should be seeing a Windows desktop notification when notify.onError('SAAS error: <%= error.message %>') fires.

[aseering]

Hey @alanosman , thanks for posting! But could you please fill out the issue template? Some of the questions there, notably the one about your exact Windows version, have a direct bearing here.

Also, are you working with files under /mnt, or in your Linux home directory or somewhere else? Different WSL filesystems added support for filesystem notifications in different Windows versions.

[alanosman]

@aseering sorry - didn't think it would be relevant at the time of writing, but of course it is. I've updated my original description for you. thanks!!

[alanosman]

@aseering forgot to add that I am working under /mnt.. yes. I have my d-drive mounted on /mnt and I use symbolic links to create access folders to those that I work on on d-drive from my home/aosman directory .

Are you thinking that it's something to do with that?

[aseering]

Hi @alanosman -- sorry for the delay, I was hoping someone else might jump in as I don't remember the exact details in this case :-) I believe that your build is new enough that it should support filesystem notifications for files located in either DrvFs (/mnt) or VolFs (/home, etc). So I'm a little surprised that this doesn't work for you. There's a lot of discussion of this on #216 , though, including the timeline of the fix as well as various workarounds; you could read and/or ask there.

[benhillis]

@alanosman - Can you clarify what you mean by "windows desktop notification?" WSL doesn't native support an type of UI framework that would be able to pop notifications on the Windows desktop.

[alanosman]

Hi @benhillis - yes, I mean the little black toast that appears when I get messages on Windows 10.

Are you saying that there is no way to drive that from within WSL? Is there some plan for that? My case specifically is with gulp or anything that tries to fire a notification.

When you run gulp on Windows (say from DOS or Cygwin) it manages to fire the desktop notification. Apple supports this on their desktop / terminal mode. It would make sense for Windows to do the same. We're not running production software, just developing on it, and this is something us developers/testers/themers could certainly benefit from.

Let me know if you need more info.

Alan

[benhillis]

@alanosman - WSL doesn't have any access to NT's Window manager unless you use an X-11 server. Have you tried that?

[alanosman]

@benhillis no.. I have no Windows experience with X-11 Server only what I can vaguely remember from my Sun Sparc computing days. Sounds like a lot of effort for a notification.

Is there a plan at your end to make it work? Has anyone else asked for this?

[benhillis]

@alanosman - No current plan to hook any Linux notifications up to Windows UI notifications. If this is something you feel strongly about I'd suggest creating a ticket on our User Voice page.

[alanosman]

OK - well thanks.. I'll close this out

[JacobDB]

I'd like to see this too, will check the UserVoice.

EDIT: Links to User Voice pages for those who are interested are below.

• https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windo/suggestions/6559018-more-integration-with-windows-features
• https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/266908-command-prompt-console-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windo/suggestions/15403401-pop-up-notifications-like-notify-send

[armpogart]

A little bit more info that could be helpful, gulp-notify uses node-notifier which in this case (ubuntu) tries to use notify-osd which is installed by default on ubuntu, so the solution would be to find out low level api there and map it to Windows Toast notifications API.

Also I think it would be better to reopen the issue until there will be fix or official no-fix from developers. But I would suggest to look in a way to implement it in future as many dev environments and tools use native notifications. Anyway it would be better if this issue stays open for now.

[stereokai]

Would like to bring back attention to this. This should be fairly easy to do. To quote again:

use notify-osd which is installed by default on ubuntu, so the solution would be to find out low level api there and map it to Windows Toast notifications API.

[xaositects]

I wrote a couple scripts (one powershell and one bash) to get this to work in a roundabout way.

WSLNotifications