Proposal: Evolution of startingDirectory

[zadjii-msft]

What if we had something like:

{
    "ignoreStartingDirectories": bool,
}

as a global setting? Then we'd just never use the startingDirectory for a profile, and always use the CWD of the Terminal. That seems like a big hammer, but there might be folks who are all setting "startingDirectory": "." for all their profiles, where this would be an easier solution.

Alternatively:
What about wt --cwd C:\foo new-tab? That would make sure that the Terminal's CWD is set to C:\foo, not just the CWD of that tab.
That would work better for things like the context menu, that might want subsequent tabs to open in the same CWD, but poorly for wt -w 0 --cwd C:\foo nt

[jerblack]

Far more important to me would be an option where you don't interfere in the startup at all and just open my WSL terminals in ~. The fact that you havce a checkbox option in your settings UI that causes Terminal to open in /mnt/c/Windows/system32 but nothing at all to say "just stay out of the way and don't interfere with the Ubuntu default behavior" is insane to me.

[DHowett]

just stay out of the way and don't interfere with the Ubuntu default behavior

Bad news: Opening in whatever directory you run it from is the WSL launcher's default behavior. That checkbox is, quite literally, a paraphrased version of "Do the default behavior for the thing you are launching."

[DHowett]

(That checkbox is, to put it another way, "do not interfere in the startup at all.")

[zadjii-msft]

Oh my god I must have totally forgotten about #4637, because that's the same thing. That's on me.

/dup #4637

[ghost]

Hi! We've identified this issue as a duplicate of another one that already exists on this Issue Tracker. This specific instance is being closed in favor of tracking the concern over on the referenced thread. Thanks for your report!