AppCode 2020.2 Help

Terminal

AppCode includes an embedded terminal emulator for working with your command-line shell from inside the IDE. Use it to run Git commands, set file permissions, and perform other command-line tasks without switching to a dedicated terminal application.

Initially, the terminal emulator runs with your default system shell, but it supports many other shells such as sh, bash, zsh, csh, and so on. For information about changing the shell, see Configure the terminal emulator.

Open the Terminal tool window

  • Select View | Tool Windows | Terminal from the main menu or press ⌥F12.

Right-click a project item in the Project tool window and choose Open in terminal from the context menu. This way the terminal will start with the directory corresponding to the selected item.

Start a new session

  • Click the Add button on the toolbar to start a new session in a separate tab.

    New session in the terminal

To run multiple sessions inside a tab, right-click the tab and select Split Vertically or Split Horizontally in the context menu.

The Terminal saves tabs and sessions when you close the project or AppCode. It preserves tab names, the current working directory, and even the shell history.

To close a tab, click the Close button on the Terminal toolbar or right-click the tab and select Close Tab from the context menu.

Press ⌥→ and ⌥← to switch between active tabs. Alternatively, you can press ⌥↓ to see the list of all terminal tabs.

To rename a tab, right-click the tab and select Rename Session from the context menu.

To search for a certain string in a Terminal session, press ⌃F. This searches all text in the session: the prompt, commands, and output.

Configure the terminal emulator

  1. In the Preferences dialog ⌃⌥S, select Tools | Terminal.

  2. Specify the desired shell to use with the embedded terminal emulator, change the start directory, and define environment variables among other settings.

The embedded terminal emulator also inherits the following IDE settings:

  • On the Keymap page, you can configure the copy ⌃C and paste ⌃V shortcuts.

  • On the Editor | General | Appearance page, you can configure blinking frequency for the caret. The Terminal does not inherit the Use block caret option because it always renders the caret as a block.

  • On the Editor | Color Scheme | Console Font page, you can configure line spacing and fonts.

  • On the Editor | Color Scheme | Console Colors page, you can configure font colors.

  • On the Editor | Color Scheme | General page, you can configure the selection foreground and background colors.

Run IDE features from the terminal

Instead of running a specific command in the integrated terminal and reading console output, you can use the relevant IDE feature, like a tool window or a dialog that implements this functionality. For example, the diff viewer actually runs the diff command in the system shell to produce results. Another example is the Log tab in the Git tool window, which is based on the output of the git log command.

Open the Log tab of the Git tool window from the terminal

  1. Type a supported command in the terminal and notice how it gets highlighted.

    Smart command execution highlighting for git log in the terminal
  2. Instead of pressing , which runs the command in the terminal, press Ctrl+Enter to open the corresponding GUI element. In this example, it will open the Log tab of the Git tool window.

This feature also works with most of the commands recognized by Run Anything (press Ctrl twice), depending on what plugins you have installed. To run a highlighted command in debug mode (use the Debug tool window instead of Run) press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

If you want to disable this feature, click The Show Options Menu button on the title bar of the Terminal window and clear the Run Commands using IDE option.

Last modified: 05 October 2020