README.md

Terminal Tabs Environment

Script to launch multiple Windows Terminal tabs based on a config.

For an example of how to create your own repo to share with your team, see https://github.com/oatsoda/TerminalTabsEnvironment-Example

Pre-requisites

Ensure you have Windows Terminal installed.

Instructions

1. Create a new repo for sharing your Development Environment with your team.
2. Create a config.json file in the repo defining the tabs and what you want auto-executed in them (execution optional)
3. (Optionally) create a PreScript.ps1 to execute any standard startup executions.
4. Add a .gitignore file containing:

config-additions.json
PreScript-Additions.ps1

5. Add the TerminalTabsEnvironment submodule with

git submodule add https://github.com/oatsoda/TerminalTabsEnvironment.git

6. Add a Startup.bat script to plumb it all together, containing:

.\TerminalTabsEnvironment\StartEnvironment.ps1 -ConfigFolderPath . -BaseTabPath ..\

Your team members then clone this repo alongside other code repos you have:

├── BasePath
│ ├── Repo1
│ ├── Repo2
│ ├── DeveloperEnvironment (or whatever you called your repo)
│ │ ├── config.json
│ │ ├── PreScript.ps1
│ │ ├── .gitignore

They may then:

1. (Optionally) Create a shortcut to the Startup.bat ready to run each day.
2. (Optionally) create a config-additions.json to configure additional tabs for their own purposes.
3. (Optionally) create a PreScript-Additions.ps1 to configure additional startup executions.

For an example of how to create your own repo to share with your team, see https://github.com/oatsoda/TerminalTabsEnvironment-Example

Config format

Example:

{
  "prompt": false,
  "focusTab": 2,
  "tabs": [
    {
      "title": "Repo 1",
      "directory": "repo1",
      "isRelative": true,
      "command": ""
    },
    {
      "title": "Repo 2",
      "directory": "repo2",
      "isRelative": true,
      "command": ""
    }
  ]
}

Config options

• prompt - Whether you want to be prompted before opening tabs.

• tabFocus - Which of the tabs you want to be focused after they are all opened.

• title - The title of each tab.

• directory - The folder with which to open the tab.

• isRelative - Whether the directory value is absolute or relative to the provided BaseTabPath

• command - The command to execute initially on opening the tab. Leave blank to have the tab just open a command prompt in the directory.

Note: Use Powershell environment values in directory or command, such as $($env:userprofile) if required.

Additional Tabs config

A common scenario is that teams would define a config.json in a repo to share this between all team members. However, you team members may want to add their own tabs but without having to edit the config.json committed to source to avoid undoing changes when pulling any changes to this repo.

To avoid this, you can specify a config-additions.json file to append more tabs to the config. You will want to add this to a .gitignore file to avoid any being committed to source.

Pre Script

To allow ad-hoc executions to take place outside of individual tabs - to initialise environments or run any non-blocking tasks. To do this, create a powershell script PreScript.ps1 alongside your config.json

Similar to the additional tabs config, you can optionally also create a PreScript-Additions.ps1 to allow users to add their own executions. Again, you will want to add this to a .gitignore of your config repo.

Note: Do not use blocking commands in the PreScript. Run blocking commands in tabs using the above config, or else launch new terminal windows from the PreScript.

Execution arguments (for within the Startup.bat)

• ConfigFolderPath - The directory which contains your JSON config file (and any additional config/scripts - see below).
• BaseTabPath - The base path for your tabs; allows relative paths to be used.
• WindowsTerminalProfileName - The windows terminal profile to use for the tabs.