Cmder: portable console emulator for windows

http://bliker.github.io/cmder/

by octo_t • 13 years ago

230 54 13 years ago

bliker.github.io

talles2• 13 years ago

Downloading right now.

Kudos for the idea and the presentation, nicely done. Really nice.

talles2• 13 years ago

I just downloaded and its awesome.

There is just one, one little thing: I can't type letters with this accent '´'. Like á or é. When I type ´ it clears the current line content.

bliker9• 13 years ago

That has never happened to me. Please submit an issue.

ZeWaren• 13 years ago

Same thing here. I can type é or è, but not à, É, Ç and more.

Seems very nice though.

elliottlan• 13 years ago

The 7zip difference is indeed shocking.

swah2• 13 years ago

Nice idea, but I was disappointed that it actually was some software that I probably tried and could not use (ConEmu and I can't remember why...). Maybe you could explain this new attempt?

(edit: mentions Conemu on the frontpage.. my bad)

BTW, why don't we have a bash in Windowsland? What are the limitations of the underlying OS that make it hard?

OTOH: Congrats for delivering!

manojlds2• 13 years ago

We do have bash, but why bring it up when we are talking about terminal emulators.

swah2• 13 years ago

It kinda wants to be bash...

bliker9• 13 years ago

Well, ConEmu is great piece of software and it works amazingly. But the default configuration is just awful. I think the author concentrates more on advanced features and Far manager. I hate spending time tweaking something to the usable state before I can use it.

My idea was to do it simple and easy. Conemu = tmux, Cmder = gnome-terminal

jmgao• 13 years ago

There are multiple ways of getting bash on windows, MSYS and Cygwin being two of them. They perform like ass compared to bash on a real unixy operating system, because Windows doesn't have fork. Its process creation is already significantly slower even before having to emulate fork/exec semantics, which makes things much much worse. (See: http://stackoverflow.com/a/985374/341371 )

tinco2• 13 years ago

Since no one's actually answering your question, focusing on useless pedantics instead, I'll do it:

The reason Windows does not have a decent virtual console, like OSX and Linux do in the form if iTerm, xTerm, gnome-term etc has to do with the way the console works in Windows.

The Windows console is very tightly coupled with a win32 system library, both its functionality and the way it behaves graphically (to for example resizing) are defined in that single place.

This practically means that most attempts of making it better in some way proxy to a hidden view of the original console. I think ConEmu works like this.

To truly make a better console on Windows, the links to that system dll would have to be hijacked from the processes that are launched in your shell, and replaced with references to your better alternative. Obviously this could be a fragile thing, and for some reason I know of no project that's made any headway in this.

I have tried the latter route myself for a little while, but after uncovering how complicated it would really have to be I decided to go do something else.

simoncion3• 13 years ago

Perhaps I missed something. What does the Windows console subsystem have to do with a program that interfaces bash with a VTxxx emulator? It's not hard to make a scrolling multi-line text field that also accepts and passes along keypresses to another program.

If I read it correctly, OP isn't looking to replace CMD or the Windows Console. It seems that he's wondering why bash is so useful, but it isn't bundled with Windows.

aidenn0• 13 years ago

So far, strictly worse than Console2 in everything I've tried. In particular ncurses apps in an ssh session render terribly no matter what I set TERM to. "ansi" works the best, but still I find myself hitting C-l to get rid of garbage regularly.

bliker9• 13 years ago

Yes, I am working to get the Mintty working, But Mintty (like putty uses) does not work well for some of the windows optimized programs.

roryokane• 13 years ago

Link to Console2: http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/

MattF• 13 years ago

I prefer ConsoleZ: https://github.com/cbucher/console

Currently maintained, works better with Windows 7, and used my old Console2 configuration.

RobinBlk7• 13 years ago

What do you meaning exactly? What was terrible?

snarfy• 13 years ago

What does this add over conemu? Is this just conemu + clinks + msys repackaged?

bliker9• 13 years ago

Nothing actually, but you do not have to do it yourself. There is quite a lot of configuration and so on. But if you already have this setup, no big reason to switch.

bliker9• 13 years ago

Everybody hold tight for 1.1. I managed to get the git prompt working https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/2674600/1549691/1e3f6c02-4...

bigdubs• 13 years ago

this is awesome, can you implement posh-git style change notes too?

MrException• 13 years ago

This is awesome, thanks for putting this together! Been looking for something like this for a while.

mariusmg3• 13 years ago

I'm all for ConEmu gaining recognition because it's a great app and Maximus totally deserves it.

But why repackage conemu and call it something else ?!!!

awestroke• 13 years ago

Because it's not purely ConEmu, perhaps. What are you talking about?

mariusmg3• 13 years ago

Come on.....at least look at it before commenting.

"start vendor/conemu-maximus5/ConEmu.exe /Title Cmder /LoadCfgFile ../../config/ConEmu.xml"

It's ConEmu with a modified config file !!! Also .....don't want to be negativist...but Monokai and portable mode have been part of ConEmu since.....forever.

Again....maybe it's just me....but why try to "spin up" a ConEmu config file as ...something else instead of just ...you know...show the world a customzied ConEmu ?

brokenparser• 13 years ago

I'm always confused when "portable" and "for $OS" appear together in a title.

untog• 13 years ago

As the article itself states under the heading 'Total portability':

"Carry it with you on USB stick or in Cloud. So your settings, aliases and history can go anywhere you go"

Schiphol• 13 years ago

I think this time it means that you can take it with you in a USB stick.

Relatedly, the English could use some proofreading. Otherwise, it looks good!

bliker9• 13 years ago

Please: https://github.com/bliker/cmder/blob/gh-pages/index.html Afterwards please come pick up your beer.

recursive• 13 years ago

In windows, portable often means "installer-less".

urlwolf• 13 years ago

Great job. Still a bit laggy compared to a real unix terminal, but that's probably because of the lack of fork(). Nothing you could have done...

st0neage2• 13 years ago

Not bashing, I actually want to know: How did a terminal emulator get blown up to 250MB?

bliker9• 13 years ago

Majority is the msysgit not terminal emulator. If you do not want linux tools use the mini version. That has more resonable 7 MB.

st0neage2• 13 years ago

Ah there's what i was missing. Thanks!

SchizoDuckie2• 13 years ago

Some symlinks in the msysgit dir got packaged as individual files. It's cloned git.exe 110 times :P

eonil• 13 years ago

Looks good. Finally Windows get a real terminal?

jheriko• 13 years ago

bravo.

as much as i struggle to think of something where i would use this by design, every time i've been forced to try and use some *nix-y tools on window it has been a nightmare of cygwins and mingws... i can see the desire for this.

on the other hand i'm yet to meet one of those problems where, with a little thought and not having my hands tied, i can't remove the needless dependency and end up with a better development environment too.

horzefli• 13 years ago

i can't actually find the source code, it seems the only thing there is a ruby that downloads binaries? can someone enlighten me?

queimadus• 13 years ago

Anyone else having trouble pinning it to the taskbar and loading the cfg?

SchizoDuckie2• 13 years ago

I've just created an issue. The size difference with msysgit included seemed a tiny bit weird to me. Could it be a result of a symlink being packaged as individual files?

https://github.com/bliker/cmder/issues/54

Cmder: portable console emulator for windows

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