This is my first Emacs package distributed via Emacs package manager. It is available in MELPA package repository. The github project page is here.
Why bother?
This is to manage multiple shell (or terminal, eshell) buffers for each project. For example, to develop for Linux kernel, I usually use one shell buffer to configure and build kernel, one shell buffer to run some git command not supported by magit, one shell buffer to run qemu for built kernel, one shell buffer to ssh into guest system to test. Different set of commands is used by the shell in each buffer, so each shell should have different command history configuration, and for some shell, I may need different setup. And I have several projects to work on. In addition to project specific shell buffers, I want some global shell buffers, so that I can use them whichever project I am working on. Project shells is an Emacs package to let my life easier via helping me to manage all these shell/terminal/eshell buffers.
Install
The preferred install method is through package manager: package.el. project-shells is available in MELPA package repository.
Or you can download the project-shells.el, add its path into emacs load path, and load the file. For example, add
(add-to-list 'load-path "<directory of project-shells.el>") (require 'project-shells)
in your Emacs init file.
Usage
To enable the project-shells minor mode globally, global-project-shells-mode can be used, or it can enabled in a buffer with project-shells-mode. The default prefix key is “C-c s”, which can be changed via customizing project-shells-keymap-prefix.
The package could also be setup with enabling minor mode via call project-shells-setup, the parameter is the keymap to add project shells key binding. For example, to use project shells with projectile you can put the following forms in your init file,
(project-shells-setup projectile-mode-map)
You can add project-shells key binding in other keymap too, or you can create your own keymap.
After enabling the project-shells minor mode or binding the key, you can create or switch to the shell buffers via,
<prefix key> <shell key>
The default <shell key>s are “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, “5”, “6”, “7”, “8”, “9”, “0”, “-“, “=”, so you can have 12 shell/terminal/eshell buffers for each project. You can change the number of buffers and keys to activate them via customizing project-shells-keys. By default “1” – “0” will create shell buffers, “-” will create terminal buffers, “=” will create eshell buffers.
To create or switch to the global shells, you need to use position parameter for the <shell key>. For example,
<prefix key> C-u <shell key>
Use customize-group project-shell to change the configuration.
Work with project management package
You need a project management package enabled, so that project shells knows what the current project is and what the project root directory is. The default configuration works with projectile. To work with other project management package, you need to customize project-shells-project-name-func and project-shells-project-root-func.
Shell configuration
In the default configuration, each shell program and eshell runs by project-shells will has own history file. The default history file name is “~/.sessions/<project name>/<key>/.shell_history”. The default configuration works for bash, to support other shell, the project-shells-histfile-env may need to be customized.
If some special shell configuration is needed, the shell initialize file could be added into the session directory, the default initialize file name is “~/.sessions/<project name>/<key>/.shellrc”. The default configuration works for bash, to support other shell, the project-shells-default-init-file may need to be customized.
Linux and Lisp/Scheme 