Terminal Plugin about theia

[svenefftinge]

Progress! :)

[epatpol]

We've discussed this a bit. Here are the main points/questions we got from this discussion:

• Should the console output reuse that same terminal plugin or should it be a separate view provider?
• xterm.js looks good
• Might not be very terminal related (more like composition/phosphorjs related) but the terminal view should not be stuck to the bottom like VScode, or at least we should be able to split it (or add another terminal right next to it, so that there are two terminal windows at the bottom for instance). This is something I found was very annoying with vscode's terminal, sometimes I end up using it for some tasks but I quickly find out that I would need at least another window to execute some other commands while one is running for instance.
• Should it be possible to parse the output from the terminal so that the problems/errors views can be populated from a command called from the terminal. For example, calling "build" from theia would call make in the back-end, but it could be nice to be able to call make from the terminal and still have access to the problems/errors parsing. This might be a bit too complicated for what it offers in the end though.
• Terminal should be able to bypass browser shortcuts so that ctrl-d doesn't add theia to a bookmark
• Configurable terminal/theme/colors (might be more generic options i.e ide options)
• Support launching a local terminal if the back-end is remote (not sure about this one) if the user chooses to. Also not sure it would work with the browser (only with electron)
• Terminal should feel fluid if the remote connection is sloppy (i.e not like ssh with a laggy remote) and more like mosh with a text buffer.

As always, all of these points are open to comments/suggestions etc. :)

[kittaakos]

Terminal should be able to bypass browser shortcuts so that ctrl-d doesn't add theia to a bookmark

This could be very tricky to achieve, besides that in some cases, it will not work at all. For instance CTRL/CMD-WNT in Chrome. Additionally, it might be an undesirable feature by the users in general.

[kittaakos]

at least we should be able to split it (or add another terminal right next to it

That is a good idea, I second that.

[kittaakos]

@epatpol Could you, please clarify what do you mean by "the console output"?

[hexa00]

at least we should be able to split it (or add another terminal right next to it

Actually I think if this could be generalized anywhere possible it would be great.

For example I can't bring myself to use vscode since it won't split windows horizontally and I do that a lot...

I would very much like if any window to the extent possible could be split horizontally and vertically like for example emacs does with C-x 1 (full screen one window) 2 (split horizontally) 3 (split vercially) 0 (close)

[hexa00]

Could you, please clarify what do you mean by "the console output"?
@kittaakos I think he means like if you would run your program and have some output in stdout

[kittaakos]

For that purpose, we definitely need another, separate widget/view.

[svenefftinge]

Maybe I don't get what you mean, because our layout manager already allows to split widgets (editors/terminals/etc.) in any direction.

[svenefftinge]

Support launching a local terminal if the back-end is remote (not sure about this one) if the user chooses to. Also not sure it would work with the browser (only with electron)

Yes, it is not possible in the browser case. Why would it be useful?

[hexa00]

@svenefftinge

Maybe I don't get what you mean, because our layout manager already allows to split widgets (editors/terminals/etc.) in any direction.

Great :) I wasn't sure it applied to any widget/view... I like theia more than vscode already jk :)

[hexa00]

Support launching a local terminal if the back-end is remote (not sure about this one) if the user chooses to. Also not sure it would work with the browser (only with electron)

Well functionally doesn't have to be mirrored a 100% I think but anyway we concluded that one could just open another Theia window with a local backend. People already do that for a different directory in vscode so it sounds not too bad.

[svenefftinge]

Ok, just to clarify. The terminal plugin shall open a terminal session on the working directory, so if the backend is remote the shell is remote, otherwise local. Right?

[svenefftinge]

We decided to develop the terminal as a separated extension in its own npm package.
I propose to create a top level folder extensions in the repo, under which we put extensions.

[epatpol]

@svenefftinge yes that's what I understood!

Also good idea for the extensions folder.

[svenefftinge]

I decided to not do the terminal as a separate npm package, because development turnarounds were so bad.

[hexa00]

I guess you though of it already but documenting what you tried etc and why it doesn't work... would be good in #67

Also now that the dev is "done" could we still have it as an example externally?