Open Terminal Programmatically

Open VsCode terminal programmatically in the simplest way possible.
Launch VsCode's debugger programmatically, passing your configuration to it.

1. Motivation

Honestly? Opening a terminal internally & programmatically in vscode shouldn't be that difficult!
This extension is by far the most intuitive one you'll ever encounter for the task at hand. You simply need to remember the command open.in-terminal, and that's it! Can you handle that? Good! because the rest is fairly simple.

Consider a use-case where you want to execute multiple commands, and have each command execute on a different terminal. You can name each terminal, and even provide a different color to each one. Using open.in-terminal you can achieve exactly that behavior.

This extension provides you with a step-by-step documentation, on all operating systems.

2. Getting Started

- A. Open a terminal programmatically

To make sure the extension works properly, run this small piece of code:
(depending on your operating system)

MacOS:

open 'vscode://open.in-terminal?config={"command": "echo hello world"}'

Windows:

start vscode://open.in-terminal?config={"command": "echo hello world"}

Linux:

open 'vscode://open.in-terminal?config={"command": "echo hello world"}'

- B. Start a debug programmatically

Simply run this piece of code:
(this will not work out-of-the-box! continue reading the Usage section below for more details...)

MacOS:

open 'vscode://open.in-terminal/debug?config={"type":"node","cwd":"${workspaceFolder}/apps/backend/","program":"src/index.js"}'

Windows:

start vscode://open.in-terminal/debug?config={"type":"node","cwd":"${workspaceFolder}/apps/backend/","program":"src/index.js"}

Linux:

open 'vscode://open.in-terminal/debug?config={"type":"node","cwd":"${workspaceFolder}/apps/backend/","program":"src/index.js"}'

3. Options

- A. Open a terminal programmatically

Here is a list of all options available inside the config:

• name

type: string
default: undefined

The display name (nickname) of the terminal.

• color

type: 'red' | 'green' | 'blue' | 'yellow' | 'magenta' | 'cyan' | 'black' | 'white'
default: undefined

The color of the icon of the terminal to be opened.

• command

type: string
default: undefined

The command to execute in the shell automatically once the terminal is open.

• runtimeArgs

type: array<strings>
default: undefined

• autoFocus

type: boolean
default: false

- B. Start a debug programmatically

Basically if you know how to set a launch.json in vscode, you know how to use open.in-terminal/debug. Just pass to the config query param whatever you would have passed to a normal vscode launch configuration.

Here is an example of a complex configuration:

open 'vscode://open.in-terminal/debug?config={"type":"node","request":"launch","cwd":"${workspaceFolder}/apps/backend/","runtimeExecutable":"${workspaceRoot}/node_modules/.bin/nodemon","runtimeArgs":["--config","${workspaceFolder}/apps/backend/nodemon.json"],"program":"src/index.js","restart":true,"outputCapture":"std","sourceMaps":true}'

4. Encoded Commands

You might find yourself in a situation where your command contains special characters such that make the open.in-terminal command fail. In that case, we support an encoded config query param. To turn this feature on, you need 2 things:

• to encode your config (example below)
• add an encoded query param set to true

Here's an example:

import { execSync } from 'child_process';

const programParams = { command: 'cd apps/backend && npm run dev' };

  const configAsString = JSON.stringify(programParams);

  const encodedConfig = btoa(encodeURIComponent(configAsString));

  execSync(`open 'vscode://open.in-terminal?config=${encodedConfig}&encoded=1'`);

In the example above, the command contains &&, which causes problems during the parsing stage. By encoding your command, and turning on the encoded flag, you can avoid that, and have your command be parsed successfully. You HAVE to use btoa & encodeURIComponent since i'm using their reverse counterparts on the other side!

5. Demo

- A. Code Demo (in Node)

// filename: runAll.js

import { execSync } from 'child_process';

const programs = [
  {
    name: 'api-gateway',
    command: 'npm run start-api-gateway',
  },
  {
    name: 'users-service',
    command: 'npm run start-users-service',
  },
  {
    name: 'chat-service',
    command: 'npm run start-chat-service',
  },
  {
    name: 'frontend',
    command: 'npm run start-frontend',
  },
];

programs.forEach((program, index) => {
  const programParams = { ...program, color: 'blue', autoFocus: index === programs.length - 1 };

  execSync(`open 'vscode://open.in-terminal?config=${JSON.stringify(programParams)}'`);
});

- B. Video Demo (running the code above)

6. Contributing

If you found a bug, or have a feature request, please open an issue about it.

License

MIT © Tal Kohavy