The Evolution of WSL Support in JetBrains IDEs

Summary

JetBrains IDEs have supported WSL through several architectures, but the 2026.2 release makes Native mode the recommended entry point for projects stored there. In Native mode, the Windows IDE delegates filesystem and process operations to the Rust-based IJent agent inside WSL, with EelApi abstracting local and remote environments for IDE and plugin code. Earlier approaches included 9P filesystem access, WSLg, and Remote Development, with problems involving symlink handling, latency, GUI limitations, installation overhead, and client–backend communication costs. Performance tests on a cold first open of spring-framework measured Native mode at 11.5 seconds to become ready versus 18.5 seconds for 9P, while project-tree scanning took 3.7 versus 8.1 seconds. Remote Development remains available, but direct project opening is now preferred in IntelliJ IDEA, WebStorm, and PhpStorm.

Takeaways

1. 1

   9P access caused symlink-resolution problems, latency, degraded throughput, and delays from Microsoft Defender scans, especially for workflows involving many small files.

2. 2

   IJent performs filesystem operations inside WSL, preserving Linux path and symbolic-link semantics while avoiding an additional Java or Kotlin runtime in WSL or containers.

3. 3

   In the supplied benchmark, Native mode reduced time to readiness by 38% and project-tree scanning by 54% compared with 9P for a cold first open of spring-framework.