WSLCC — WSL Containers Compose

wslcc brings a docker compose-style workflow to Microsoft's WSL containers feature. It fills the gap of a missing compose command in wslc, and it can also drive Docker Compose so you have a single, unified interface across both backends — locally or (later) on a remote machine.

Status: early scaffold / public-preview era tooling. WSL containers themselves are in public preview (2026); install with wsl --update --pre-release. Expect rough edges and breaking changes.

Components

• wslcc — the command-line tool. Mirrors docker compose ... under a compose branch (wslcc compose up, wslcc compose ps, ...), plus wslcc daemon ... and wslcc version.
• wslccd — a small background daemon exposing a gRPC service (named pipe locally; optional HTTP for remote). Runs as a per-user process or a Windows Service.
• A provider-agnostic core library, plus providers for WSL containers (wslc) and Docker Compose (docker).

graph LR
  cli["wslcc (CLI)"] -->|gRPC over npipe/http| daemon["wslccd (daemon)"]
  gui["GUI (WinUI3, future)"] -.->|gRPC| daemon
  daemon --> core["Core engine"]
  core --> wslc["Provider: WSL containers"]
  core --> docker["Provider: Docker Compose"]

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Quick start

Prerequisites: Windows with WSL pre-release (wsl --update --pre-release), the .NET 10 SDK, and optionally Docker (for the docker provider).

# Build
dotnet build Wslcc.slnx

# Run the vertical slice
wslcc daemon start
wslcc version
wslcc compose version
wslcc daemon stop

wslcc talks to wslccd over a named pipe by default (npipe://wslccd). Use -H/--host to change transport (the compose commands use --wslcc-host/--wslcc-provider so they don't clash with standard docker compose options):

wslcc --? ; # help
wslcc version -H npipe://wslccd                  # local named pipe (default)
wslcc version -H http://remote-host:5211         # remote daemon over HTTP/2 (no auth yet)
wslcc compose version --wslcc-provider docker    # target a specific provider

Repository layout

• src/ — C# source (libraries, providers, daemon, CLI).
• tests/ — unit tests.
• docs/ — architecture, provider notes, CLI mapping, daemon, compose file support, roadmap, and the TODO list.
• examples/ — sample compose projects.

See docs/architecture.md for the full picture and docs/todo.md for what's next (including a planned managed API NuGet package and a WinUI3 GUI).

License

MIT — see LICENSE.