Unable to set WSL as the shell on gVim

Question

I followed the instructions given in this answer: https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/16436/25843, and I've set my shell to point to wsl.exe like this (wsl.exe path seems to be different on my machine compared to the linked answer):

if has("windows")
    set shell=C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe
    set shellpipe=|
    set shellredir=>
    set shellcmdflag=
endif

But I end up getting this error if I try to run, let's say :!ls:

C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe  "ls"
'C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
shell returned 1
Hit any key to close this window...

However, directly running C:\Windows\System32\wsl.exe "ls" in the command line seems to work. Also, setting the shell to point to the PowerShell executable seems to work as well, so I'm confused about what I am missing here.

Answer 1

Ok, my bad. Turns out the path should really be C:\Windows\Sysnative\wsl.exe, as mentioned in the linked question. I changed it to System32 because I couldn't find the Sysnative folder under C:\Windows.

Apparently the Sysnative folder is kind of a virtual folder which exists only from the perspective of 32-bit programs.

More info can be found here:

• https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/1598
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog64/running-32-bit-applications