How to remote control Vagrant installed on Windows, within Linux Subsystem? - windows

Question

According to the documentation of Vagrant, the topic WSL and Vagrant is advanced.
You need to install Vagrant on Linux, because:
While the vagrant.exe executable provided by the Vagrant Windows
installation is accessible from within the WSL, it will not function
as expected.
But I don't want to run Vagrant primarily in Linux. I would like to use Virtual Box, installed on my Windows 10 host. But I don't want to leave Linux bash, just to start Vagrant.
Is there a way to remote control Vagrant from within WSL?

Answer 1

It is true, that $ vagrant.exe would cause unexpected behaviour, because Vagrant (installed on Windows) is unable to handle unix-style paths.
But what actually works:
When you are in bash, enter $ cmd.exe
Perform your Vagrant commands, e.g.: C:\> vagrant up
And return to bash, using C:\> exit
Fortunately cmd.exe has got options, which allows us to call Vagrant via cmd.exe:
$ cmd.exe /c vagrant up
This will launch Windows' command line, perform the command, and return to bash.
Even more cool, when you add this to your ~/.bashrc file:
alias cmd='cmd.exe'
alias vagrant='cmd /c vagrant'
You can use the native vagrant commands in WSL bash (performed in Windows):
$ vagrant up
For me, this works like charm.
Notice: I've changed my root mount paths of harddrives from /mnt/c to /c. When I enter cmd.exe I'll end up in the same directory. Windows does convert the paths. But Windows is not able to handle e.g. ~. Then, Windows will end up in C:\Windows\System32