VSCode - Terminal Capture

As a vim user, one of the features that I truly enjoy is the integrated terminal and the ability to switch to Terminal-Normal and quickly scroll through the output of my terminal. As such I wanted a quick and easy way to do something simliar in vscode (including using vi keys to navigate/interact with the terminal).

The first thing that I tried was using tmux in the terminal and start it by default when in a vscode environment. While this worked, I didn't like the flow quite as much. So I decided to try my hand at writing a vscode extension.

Features

Take the output from the last active terminal and dump it into a new file.

There are currently two modes that the extension can run in.

1. clipboard mode
2. caching mode (alpha mode)

When using clipboard mode, the extension functions just like a macro where it quickly runs the following vscode commands.

• workbench.action.terminal.selectAll
• workbench.action.terminal.copySelection
• workbench.action.terminal.clearSelection
• workbench.action.files.newUntitledFile
• editor.action.clipboardPasteAction

The caching mode system will track all data entered into the terminal (including keypresses like backspace) and display all the captured content. Right now this means that it will display all the special characters including \b and \r, etc. This is nice in that it can capture more of the history of how the terminal was run, however it will also use more memory as it is caching the output for the life of the terminal.

Adding a Keybinding

By default, this extension does not introduce a keybinding as we don't want to introduce a conflict or other confusion to your workflow. It you would like to setup this command to a keybinding, here is an example of the json you can enter in the keybindings.json file.

{
  "key": "ctrl+t c",
  "command": "extension.terminalCapture.runCapture",
  "when": "terminalFocus"
}

Extension Settings

This extension has a couple of settings depending on the type of usage you would like to have.

• terminalCaptuer.enable: enable/disable this extension
• terminalCapture.useClipboard: use/disable clipboard copy mode

This extension has a single command.

• Terminal: Capture Output - extension.terminalCapture.runCapture

Known Issues

At this time, it is known that the caching mode will include style characters in the output. This is to be fixed soon.

0.1.0

For this version, this is the initial release that supports using the clipboard to copy content from the terminal to an unamed file.

The cache mode is partially supported, but does not handle all special characters correctly. This is currently not the recommended mode.