dotfiles/modules/terminal.org

Terminal

Performing terminal interactions is a must-have for any modern editor. This module introduces two means of doing so with EShell¹ and VTerm².

Emacs Lisp shell

EShell¹ is a fully POSIX compliant shell written entirely in Emacs Lisp. While not a traditional terminal emulator, it provides a native REPL for Emacs Lisp code with everything available in the environment.

• Don't highlight the prompt

• Favour use of system utilities

• Open in the current buffer with SPC e

(setq eshell-highlight-prompt nil
      eshell-prefer-lisp-functions nil)

(dotfiles/leader "e" '(eshell :which-key "Shell"))

Prompt extras

Implement the lambda prompt for aesthetic purposes with the EShell Prompt Extras³ package.

(use-package eshell-prompt-extras
  :custom (eshell-prompt-function 'epe-theme-lambda))

Here's an example of what that looks like:

~/.emacs.d/modules:main*? λ

Interactive Terminal

EShell¹ isn't enough when needing interactivity from the terminal. Going through Thinking in C++⁴ for one of my courses required lots of terminal interaction which Eshell¹ was unable to handle. VTerm's² based on an external C library which is blazing fast, and fully interactive.

• Always compile the module

• Open in the current buffer with SPC v

• Install the required packages on Debian/Ubuntu

(use-package vterm
  :commands (vterm)
  :custom (vterm-always-compile-module t)
  :init (dotfiles/install "cmake libtool libtool-bin")
  :config (dotfiles/leader "v" '(vterm-other-window :which-key "Terminal")))

Resources

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¹

https://gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/eshell/index.html

²

https://github.com/akermu/emacs-libvterm

³

https://github.com/zwild/eshell-prompt-extras

⁴

https://chrishayward.xyz/posts/immutable-emacs/