Console Launcher

Description

Console is an improved Windows command prompt which most notable features are tabs and high customization potential. You can setup Console to handle multiple shells (Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell, Git, Cygwin, MinGW, …) so that they will launch in their own tabs. Here's a screenshot:

There's also a nice modified version called ConsoleZ which not only looks better but also adds a couple of usability features.

This extension adds a command to launch Console in the location of the currently selected Solution Explorer item. The command is added to the Solution Explorer context menu, Solution Explorer toolbar and the Tools main menu. It is only visible when a solution or project is open. Options allow for specifying a number of Console tabs (profiles) which will be opened when you click the Console command.

Quick Start Guide

Let’s assume you’ve already installed Console application and configured it for your own convenience. Your tab settings should look somewhat like this:

Now you can install this extension and have Visual Studio launch Console for you. Open the Visual Studio Options window and find the Console Launcher section. The only mandatory setting is Console Path. If you don’t put anything in the Tabs section Console will launch with the first tab open. However if you want to open, say, Windows PowerShell and Git at the same time you should use the following settings:

Note that these tab names are case sensitive and have to correspond the names in the Console application settings. Now when you click the Console command in Visual Studio, the Console application will launch along with Windows PowerShell and Git open in their tabs:

In case the extension cannot figure out the physical directory corresponding to the item selected in the Solution Explorer it will fall back to the solution directory, then to the Default Working Directory option value and finally to your Windows home folder.

Changelog

• 1.0.0 - July 24th 2011 - Initial release
• 1.0.1 - July 26th 2011 - Launching Console in the context of Solution Folders does not throw exceptions now
• 1.0.2 - August 9th 2011 - Works better with the Visual C++ projects. Improved the context directory fallback logic
• 1.1.0 - August 17th 2011 - Added a Default Working Directory setting under Options
• 1.1.0 - March 8th 2012 - Bugfix release
• 1.2.0 - August 24th 2012 - Updated to make compatible with Visual Studio 2012
• 1.2.1 - August 25th 2012 - Fixed the case where Console wasn't opening as a foreground window
• 1.2.2 - August 27th 2012 - Fixed the Visual Studio 2010 backwards compatibility issue
• 1.2.3 - September 19th 2012 - Better missing executable detection. Fixed the information in Help - About Microsoft Visual Studio
• 1.2.4 - September 21st 2012 - When installed together with total Commander Launcher, the product details didn't show up
• 1.3.0 - December 31st 2012 - Settings are now validated before save in the Options dialog
• 1.3.1 - October 21st 2013 - Compatible with Visual Studio 2013
• 1.3.2 - December 18th 2014 - Fix launching with Web Site projects selected
• 1.4.0 - August 8th 2015 - Compatible with Visual Studio 2015 thanks to Julian Paulozzi and Kelvin Del Monte
• 1.4.1 - August 28th 2015 - Fix Visual Studio 2013 compatibility
• 1.5.0 - March 23rd 2017 - Add Visual Studio 2017 compatibility
• 1.6.0 - May 28th 2019 - Add Visual Studio 2019 compatibility thanks to https://github.com/zvarg
• 1.6.1 - June 2nd 2019 - Fix Visual Studio 2019 version check