I don't think it is terribly important (other colleagues are able to reproduce with other node versions)

Nah it's a manifestation of about the most pervasive bug around here (if you don't count 0xhexdigits fail at startup). Call this dupe #1956 but you can pick any dating back to #14.

this does not work for me

code.visualstudio.com/docs

// settings.json
{
    "remote.WSL.fileWatcher.polling": true
}

but this is helped

// settings.json
{
    "files.watcherExclude": {
        "**/**/*": true
    }
}

@qwabra I tried your approach and even that doesn't work.

I tried:

    "remote.WSL.fileWatcher.polling": true,

then

    "files.watcherExclude": {
        "**/**/*": true
    }

then both.

None of this works for me.

Can anyone please help?

This is pretty annoying... for now I just close VS code since the file watcher has a lock on the files, do file work in terminal or file explorer and reopen when done with code . in ubuntu.
Otherwise, unless there is a reason to not upgrade to WSL 2 I would suggest anybody does so.

Why is the workaround from #3395 (comment) not explicitly stated in the VS Code docs section about known WSL limitations? It should note that all workspace files must be excluded from being watched otherwise the problem will persist…

...
for now I just close VS code since the file watcher has a lock on the files, do file work in terminal or file explorer and reopen
...

you can just open settings.json and switch trigger false/true in "**/*": false

{
    "files.watcherExclude": {
        //
        // block Svelte update
        "**/*": false,
        // "**/*": true,
        //
        "**/.git/objects/**": true,
        "**/.git/subtree-cache/**": true,
        "**/node_modules/**": true,
        "**/.hg/store/**": true
    },
}

it can be set locally

(use workspace settings) .vscode/settings.json
see docs

something is fundamentally broken here. while having my remote-wsl workspace open in vscode, i get the following in a command prompt:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>handle my-directory-name | wsl wc -l
177481

that means the windows kernel has every single one of the files in my workspace open.

i have the following in my settings.json:

	"remote.WSL.fileWatcher.polling": true

this does not work for me

code.visualstudio.com/docs

// settings.json
{
    "remote.WSL.fileWatcher.polling": true
}

but this is helped

// settings.json
{
    "files.watcherExclude": {
        "**/**/*": true
    }
}

Thank you. This also solved my problem in installing go tools on WSL.

// settings.json (located in %appdata%/code/user/settings.json)
{
"files.watcherExclude": {
"//*": true
}
}

After saving it, restart VsCode.