Terminal Turbo Charger

Automatically spawn integrated terminal windows and split terminals, and run any shell commands when VSCode starts up!

How to use

Simply configure your VSCode settings JSON file to look something like this:

 "turboCharger.runOnStartup": true,
 "turboCharger.terminals": [
    {
      "location": "editor",
      "splitTerminals": [
        {
          "name": "server",
          "commands": ["cd server", "npm i", "npm run dev"],
          "icon": "test-view-icon",
          "color": "terminal.ansiYellow",
        },
        {
          "name": "client",
          "commands": ["cd client","npm run dev"],
          "icon": "comment-discussion",
          "color": "terminal.ansiGreen"
        },
        {
          "name": "test",
          "commands": ["jest --watch"],
          "icon": "activate-breakpoints",
          "color": "terminal.ansiBlue"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "splitTerminals": [
        {
          "name": "build & e2e",
          "commands": ["npm run eslint", "npm run build", "npm run e2e"],
          "shouldRunCommands": false
        },
        {
          "name": "worker",
          "commands": ["npm-run-all --parallel redis tsc-watch-start worker"]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]

The outer array represents a integrated VSCode terminal window, and the splitTerminals array contains the information about how each terminal window should be split up. The extension will first read from turboCharger settings and then fall back to restoreTerminals for a few releases.

Configuration Reference

Terminal Window

Top-level objects in turboCharger.terminals (preferred) or restoreTerminals.terminals (legacy).

• splitTerminals: (Required) Array of terminal split configurations.
• location: (Optional) Where to open the terminal. Values: "panel" (default), "editor", or "view".

Split Terminal

Objects inside splitTerminals.

• name: (Optional) Terminal name.
• commands: (Optional) Array of string commands to run.
• shouldRunCommands: (Optional) Boolean. If false, commands are pasted but not executed.
• icon: (Optional) ID of a VS Code icon (e.g. "zap").
• color: (Optional) Terminal color ID (e.g. "terminal.ansiRed").

You can also use a custom config file. The preferred file is .vscode/turbo-charger.json in any workspace you want. The legacy file .vscode/restore-terminals.json is still supported for a few releases but is deprecated. If a config file is present, the extension will try and load settings from it first, then use settings.json as a fallback. A sample legacy config file is here.

Migration

• Update settings keys from restoreTerminals.* to turboCharger.*.
• If you use a workspace config file, rename .vscode/restore-terminals.json to .vscode/turbo-charger.json.
• The legacy restoreTerminals.* settings and .vscode/restore-terminals.json will be removed after a few releases.

Extra info

The order of split terminals from left to right is the order in the array.

You can manually trigger the restoration of terminals by running Restore Terminals in the command palette.

If you find the extension glitching out, try increasing the restoreTerminals.artificialDelayMilliseconds setting to a higher number, such as 1000.

If you do not want this extension to close the currently open terminal windows, you can simply set restoreTerminals.keepExistingTerminalsOpen to true.

If you do not want it to restore terminals on VSCode startup, but instead only run when you trigger it manually from the command palette, then set restoreTerminals.runOnStartup to false.

If you don't want the commands to actually run, just be pasted in the terminal, then set shouldRunCommands to false in each splitTerminals object.

If you don't like using split terminals, then just provide one object in each split terminal array, which should be the intuitive thing to do.

Enjoy!