Cursor Setup for WSL

The WSL Cursor setup, debugging your setup before you even code! I initially tried Cursor around 18 months ago when I saw something from Catalin about it. At the time I couldn’t get past launching it with the cursor . command.

With all the hype going around about it, it was only a matter of time before I had to try it out again. Guess what? It was exactly the same issue from the last time I tried using it. This time I gave it a good shake trying to se it up and running and with some digging around on the Cursor GitHub issues I found a solution.

This is a guide referencing all the those helpful people on the Cursor GitHub issues that commented with their solutions. I pieced together this guide with some trial and error and I’m putting here for future me.

Thanks

Ok, let me get the thanks out of the way first. Thanks to these GitHub users that gave me enough information to get this working.

• Sinuhé Coronel with the initial details on resolving the issue
• Kadir Balku with details on cleaning system and resolving PATH issues.
• Daniel Wang for sharing a Gist that means there’s no messing around trying to get the Commit has of your Cursor install.

Now, if you don’t use the terminal to launch Cursor then you’re good, really, but if, like me you do a lot of your navigating around projects via the file system then open up your projects from the terminal (with code .) then you’ll probably want to read through this.

Fresh install

This is the first time you have thought about using Cursor then this will get you set up with it.

Using WinGet I can install cursor from a PowerShell prompt:

winget install Anysphere.Cursor

Open Cursor from the Windows start menu and it will give you the initial setup prompt, ℹ️ don’t click the options that will add PATH variables for +code button, or +cursor button.

Ok, if I chose not to install the settings and extensions from VS Code then I’ll at least need to install the WSL extension. Connect to WSL, and check that the ~/.cursor-server/ is present.

ℹ️ Once you have connected to your WSL instance keep Cursor open while you do the rest of the steps here…

I’ll need to amend my PATH variable to now to include the path to the cursor command.

Log out my path variables with printenv PATH copy the output into a text editor.

Then append the cursor command path to the end of printenv PATH output.

:/mnt/c/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/bin

Change <USER_NAME> to my actual Windows username.

To make this more permanent I can add the path to my .zshrc file:

echo -e '\n# Cursor \nexport PATH="$PATH:/mnt/c/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/bin"' >> ~/.zshrc

Then source the .zshrc file with source ~/.zshrc.

Now I should be able to run the cursor . command by navigating the the file and running it from the terminal.

I should be able to navigate to the file located at:

/mnt/c/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/Local/Programs/cursor/resources/app/bin/cursor

This will give me the following output:

To use Cursor with the Windows Subsystem for Linux, please install Cursor
in Windows and uninstall the Linux version in WSL. You can then use the
`cursor` command in a WSL terminal just as you would in a normal command
prompt.
Do you want to continue anyway? [y/N]

👆 this is complete bullshit, as it’s already installed, it’s just that the script is borked.

To the first helpful comment I found was from ddwang, who was able to get the script working with the following, you can find that in this comment which points to this Gist.

There were a couple of bits that don’t work as expected so I’ve forked it here 👇

I changed the following…

Line 28:

+APP_NAME="cursor"
-APP_NAME="code"

And I commented out lines 70-73 which I think is trying to overwrite the code command.

+# if [ ! -d "$MY_CLI_DIR_YO/code" ]; then
+#     ln -s "$MY_CLI_DIR_YO/cursor" "$MY_CLI_DIR_YO/code"
+# fi
-if [ ! -d "$MY_CLI_DIR_YO/code" ]; then
-     ln -s "$MY_CLI_DIR_YO/cursor" "$MY_CLI_DIR_YO/code"
- fi

ℹ️ for the VSCODE_PATH <USER_NAME> this should be your WSL username if it differs from your Windows username.

Running the cursor . command with those lines not commented out gave me the following:

cursor .
ln: failed to create symbolic link '/home/<USER_NAME>/.cursor-server/bin/<CURSOR_COMMIT>/bin/remote-cli/code': File exists

With those lines commented out I was able to run the cursor . command with no issues.

That should be it! 🎉

Re-install start again

If, like me, you’ve already installed Cursor things have gone tits up and you’ll need to re-install it.

So, do that first, however you installed it either through WinGet or the Windows settings.

Then, you’ll need to remove all remnants of the old install.

This is where I found issue 870 (still open after a year) from the Cursor GitHub issues, which has a load of great resources, firstly was this comment from lesmo which give some good info but didn’t really work for me.

Then there was this guide from KadirBalku which is very thorough and worked for me.

Using the Windows Run prompt (Win+R) and entering `%userprofile% will take you to the Windows user profile folder.

Delete the following folders:

C:/Users/<USER_NAME>/.cursor/
C:/Users/<USER_NAME>/.cursor-tutor/

Then using the file explorer navigate to the following folders and delete anything in them relating to Cursor:

C:/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/Local/Programs/
C:/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/Local/
C:/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/LocalLow/
C:/Users/<USER_NAME>/AppData/Roaming/

Now we’re good to go and can follow the Fresh install steps.

If you already have Cursor in your PATH then you can follow the steps in the Fresh install section but remember to append the cursor command to the end of your PATH variable.

That’s it, I hope this helps someone else out!

Tips

If you want to use the floating composer window instead of the side panel (as it only opens on the left and I like my panels on the right) then you can create a key binding for it.

If you don’t know what that means it’s essentially where you can create all the keyboard shortcuts you like. Use the command prompt (Ctrl+Shift+p) then search for “Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)”

Then add in your desired key combination to open the composer I have mine bound to Ctrl+Shift+l

// Place your key bindings in this file to override the defaults
[
  {
    "key": "ctrl+shift+l",
    "command": "composer.startComposerPrompt"
  }
]