December 6th, 2025

The day Windows broke me. And Linux saved me. And one tiny flag fixed everything.

December 6th, 2025

The Day I Almost Opened a Juice Shop

Yesterday was painful. Today was worse. But it ended with the app actually running on my phone.

Here’s the full story.

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6:00 PM — The Collapse

Around 6 PM, my day officially collapsed.

Gradle was happily torturing me with:

path exceeds 260 characters

I did EVERYTHING a normal, responsible, tech-loving human would do:

• Enabled long path support
• Restarted Windows
• Checked registry
• Googled like a desperate uncle
• Even tried pleading

But Windows behaved like: “No. Not today. Suffer.”

I got frustrated and thought: “Bun is the criminal. Let’s switch to npm or pnpm.”

Then I remembered that I built my entire monorepo on Bun because I “love speed”. So switching meant breaking EVERYTHING.

At this point I was just looking at the screen like: “Super. I am now officially the problem.”

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7:00 PM — The Snap

By 7:30 PM, my internal organs started giving up.

Every solution online felt like therapy advice from aliens.

I snapped. Absolutely snapped.

“Windows doesn’t want to cooperate? Fine. I’ll use Linux. Enough.”

Opened WSL like a man entering the gym after a breakup.

Fresh Ubuntu shell. Pure oxygen. Felt like life rebooted.

I told myself: “Fresh clone. Fresh install. Fresh mind. No NTFS nonsense now.”

For the first time that evening, something resembled hope.

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8:00 PM — Fresh Start in WSL

Inside WSL, I cloned my repo again.

It actually downloaded smoothly — no drama, no warnings, no stupidity.

git clone [repo]
cd CommitT
bun install

Installed Bun. Installed deps. Installed Android SDK. Did everything clean.

But mentally, I was a hollow human.

I thought: “Okay Maajith… one last attempt. If this fails, I’ll go start a juice shop.”

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9:00 PM — The Build

With full fear and zero confidence, I typed:

bun expo run:android

And waited like a man awaiting exam results.

Then… magic.

No freezing. No choking. No Windows drama. Gradle was actually… cooperating?

I felt suspicious. Too smooth. Something was wrong.

And yes — because this is my life —

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9:30 PM — Wrong Branch

The build finished.

I saw:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

For a second, I smiled like a proud dad.

Then reality slapped me:

I BUILT THE WRONG BRANCH.

I cloned the default branch — NOT my latest CommitT branch.

I just stared at the screen like: “I am a certified clown. Why am I like this?”

Back to cloning. Back to reinstalling. Back to accepting my fate.

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10:00 PM — Correct Branch

Now I cloned the correct branch.

git clone -b main [repo]
bun install
bun expo run:android

Installed everything again. Hit build again.

And Linux, my hero, said: “Sure bro. No problem.”

At 10:42 PM, I saw the REAL success message.

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 8m 23s

Correct branch. Correct environment. Correct everything.

This one actually felt good — because this time, it was me who fixed it. Not luck. Not guesswork. Actual understanding.

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10:45 PM — Finally Understanding

Finally, after HOURS of fighting errors like a headless chicken, everything started making logical sense.

I understood:

• It wasn’t Bun’s fault
• It wasn’t Expo
• It wasn’t React Native
• It wasn’t “my laptop is cursed”

The real villain was: Windows NTFS + file paths + hard-link restrictions.

All the freezes, CMake loops, 90% hangs — everything connected together.

For the first time in 5 hours, I didn’t feel like a circus monkey smashing the keyboard.

I actually felt like a software engineer again.

I sat back and said: “Okay. Now I get why everything broke. Finally makes sense.”

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11:30 PM — New Problem

So the build worked.

I happily scanned the Expo QR code.

Expo immediately slapped me:

failed to connect to /172.19.xx.xx

I found out the sad truth:

WSL runs in a VIRTUAL NETWORK. My phone is on WiFi. They cannot talk.

Even if I pray. Even if I sacrifice a goat.

WSL IP:   172.19.x.x
Phone IP: 172.17.x.x

Two different universes. No communication. No chance.

I realized: “Fantastic. Build problem solved. App still can’t run. Beautiful life.”

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12:00 AM — The One Flag

I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh.

But then… I tried:

bun expo start --tunnel

One small command. One tiny option.

And suddenly:

Tunnel connected.
Tunnel ready.
Expo opened.
Phone connected.
APP RAN.

I sat there like: “Wait wait wait… after SIX hours of suffering… the solution was THIS ONE OPTION???”

I felt happy. I felt stupid. I felt relieved. I felt defeated. All emotions unlocked like PUBG skins.

But one thing was certain:

It finally worked.

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Lessons Learned

1. Windows NTFS is not your friend for native builds — hard links, path limits, all of it
2. WSL is the move — but keep your project in the Linux filesystem, not /mnt/c
3. Always check which branch you’re on — I’m still embarrassed
4. WSL networking is isolated — use --tunnel for Expo when your phone can’t reach WSL directly
5. Sometimes the fix is one flag — after hours of debugging, the answer was --tunnel

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Final Thoughts

Two days of suffering. Countless errors. Multiple emotional breakdowns.

But now I have:

• A working build environment
• A running app on my phone
• Actual understanding of what went wrong

Tomorrow, I actually get to write code instead of fighting my tools.

That’s progress.

See you tomorrow.

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Proof of Work

The error that started it all

BUILD SUCCESSFUL - finally

App running on phone via tunnel

The moment of victory

Proof it actually works