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User guide › Terminal and C# Interactive

Terminal and C# Interactive

Terminal

View > Terminal (Ctrl+`) opens the integrated terminal at the bottom of the window. It starts in the solution's folder, or in your home folder when no solution is open.

  • Ctrl+` again hides it.
  • Ctrl+Shift+` opens another terminal.

Shells (profiles)

  • Codalus IDE finds the shells installed on your machine: PowerShell (pwsh), Windows PowerShell and Command Prompt on Windows; bash, zsh and fish on Linux and macOS.
  • .NET Developer starts your default shell with the .NET SDK of the open solution first on PATH (DOTNET_ROOT set).
  • Choose the default with the terminal.defaultProfile setting. Or pick a shell with Terminal: New Terminal from the command palette.

Splits and tabs

  • Each terminal is a tab in the Terminal window.
  • Split Terminal (Ctrl+Shift+5, Cmd+\ on macOS) puts a second terminal beside the current one.
  • Alt+Left and Alt+Right move between terminals.
  • Kill Terminal ends the shell and closes the tab.

Shell integration (bash, zsh and PowerShell; terminal.shellIntegration, on by default)

  • The terminal knows the shell's current folder: a new split starts there.
  • It knows where each command starts and ends, and its exit code: a mark in the gutter turns red when a command fails.
  • Your own startup files (.bashrc, .zshrc, your PowerShell profile) still run.

Links

  • Ctrl+click a URL to open it in your browser.
  • Ctrl+click a path(line,col) or path:line:col reference, which compilers and test runners print, to open the file at that line. Relative paths are resolved against the terminal's current folder.

Find, copy and paste

  • Ctrl+F finds text in the terminal and its scrollback.
  • Select with the mouse to copy:
    • On Windows and Linux, Ctrl+C copies when there is a selection; otherwise it interrupts the running program. Ctrl+Shift+C always copies.
    • On macOS, use Cmd+C.
  • Ctrl+V pastes on Windows, Cmd+V on macOS and Ctrl+Shift+V on Linux, where Ctrl+V stays with the shell. Multi-line pastes are bracketed, so shells don't run them line by line.
  • terminal.copyOnSelect copies as soon as you select.

Full-screen programs

  • vim, htop, less and similar programs work: alternate screen, mouse reporting, true colour, wide characters and emoji.
  • Hold Shift to select text while a program uses the mouse.

Keys

  • Most keys go to the shell while a terminal has focus. A short list stays with the IDE: the search box (Ctrl+Q) and the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), build, debug and run, focus movement and the terminal's own commands.
  • Change that list with terminal.commandsToSkipShell.

Appearance

  • The terminal uses the IDE's theme colours, including High Contrast.
  • It uses the editor's font, unless you set terminal.fontFamily and terminal.fontSize.
  • terminal.scrollback sets how many lines each terminal keeps (default 10,000).

Screen readers

  • The terminal exposes its visible text to screen readers (UI Automation on Windows, the accessibility API on macOS and AT-SPI on Linux).

Running programs in the terminal

  • Set run.console to integratedTerminal to run console apps there with Start Without Debugging (Ctrl+F5), so they can read input.
  • The default, outputWindow, shows their output in the Output window. externalConsole opens a separate console window.

C# Interactive

View > C# Interactive opens a C# read-eval-print loop. Type C# and press Enter:

  • statements run;
  • an expression without a semicolon prints its value;
  • variables, methods and types you declare stay available for later submissions.

Input

Key Action
Enter Runs the input when it is a complete submission; otherwise starts a new line (for example after if (x) {).
Ctrl+Enter Always runs.
Shift+Enter Always starts a new line.
Alt+Up, Alt+Down Previous and next submission from the history.
Escape Clears the input.
Ctrl+Space, Ctrl+Shift+Space Completion and parameter info. They know everything submitted so far.

Directives

  • #r "path/to/Library.dll" references an assembly.
  • #r "nuget: Newtonsoft.Json, 13.0.3" downloads a package and its dependencies. Leave out the version for the latest stable one. Package sources and credentials come from the nuget.config around the working folder, as in the package manager.
  • #load "helpers.csx" runs a script file.
  • Relative paths are relative to the working folder.

Starting over

  • Reset (the window's toolbar, or C# Interactive: Reset) discards everything and starts fresh. It also stops a submission that runs forever.
  • Clear empties the window but keeps the state.

Working with your code

  • Send Selection to Interactive (Ctrl+E Ctrl+E, or the editor's context menu) runs the selected code, or the current line, in C# Interactive.

  • Initialize Interactive with Project (a project's context menu in Solution Explorer) builds the project, then resets C# Interactive with the project's assembly and references. The working folder becomes the project's folder. Then you can call your own code:

    > Greetings.Greeter.Greet("the REPL")
"Hello from the REPL"

Isolation

  • Your code runs in a separate process (codalus-replhost), never in the IDE itself.
  • If it crashes or calls Environment.Exit, C# Interactive restarts with an empty state and says so. The IDE keeps running.
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