Terminal: Allow the user's "open pane" bindings to open a pane with the current pane

[zadjii-msft]

Currently, the split pane keybindings will always open the default profile.

Perhaps a user will want to open a pane with the currently active pane's profile instead?

This is _not_ #998, which is more about opening a pane with a specific profile, while this is about changing the default split behavior.

[DHowett-MSFT]

Bear with me for a second. Somebody suggested this in another issue, and I wonder if we should consider it here.

The new pane is focused, and put in a [number entry] or [search for profiles by name] mode, just like one of our earlier issues suggested.

We probably want that UI _anyway_, since it has some benefits. Thoughts?

[zadjii-msft]

Hmmmmmmm. I don't hate the idea. That's a good idea.

Lets take it another step. With the context of #1142, we could add an arg(s) that says "open the picker dialog" or "open my default" or "open this specific profile", and default to the "open the picker" setting. Then, the user could have one keybinding for "split the default" and another for "split with the picker" (which is the settings I would use :P)

[fpintos]

My first inclination is to ask the new pane to inherit everything from the parent pane - the shell, its current working directory, environment variables (maybe?), etc, the reason being that I mentally want to split the existing shell, as-is.

I can see how others might want to split the pane into something completely new, so the idea of asking which shell to use is ok as well, either thru UI or settings in the keybindings.

So, having different commands and keybindings for them seems to be the better solution.

I'll argue that there are many different cases when splitting the pane:

• start the same shell, inheriting the environment of the parent pane (profile,working dir, environment var, etc).
• start the same shell, but do not inherit the current environment (ie, same as starting a new tab).
• start the default shell
• start an arbitrary shell

[DHowett-MSFT]

Just chiming in;

_ (profile,working dir, environment var, etc)._

Anything about the _actual process_ on the other end is, in the general case, impossible to replicate. The connected process could be ssh.exe, whose environment variables and working directory have no bearing on the detectable environment and working directory from the terminal side. The same actually, weirdly enough, applies to WSL. It doesn't use "working directory" and it doesn't expose its environment variables to interested Windows processes in any way.

Powershell doesn't even _set_ the current working directory, so its directory can't be detected (!) either.

[zadjii-msft]

Other related threads with thoughts on this discussion:
https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/2315#issuecomment-519317472
https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/1536#issuecomment-519107586

Dammit Dustin beat me

[gingters]

I really like the idea to change the default to use the current profile as default when creating a new pane with the default shortcut, and not the 'default profile'.

Using another shortcut (not the main shortcut though), should open a pane and ask for the profile to open there (#3586).

[Surya-06]

Just chiming in;

_ (profile,working dir, environment var, etc)._

Anything about the _actual process_ on the other end is, in the general case, impossible to replicate. The connected process could be ssh.exe, whose environment variables and working directory have no bearing on the detectable environment and working directory from the terminal side. The same actually, weirdly enough, applies to WSL. It doesn't use "working directory" and it doesn't expose its environment variables to interested Windows processes in any way.

Powershell doesn't even _set_ the current working directory, so its directory can't be detected (!) either.

Was interested in this but seems like it's not going to happen. Just curious if something like 'start' in cmd can't work in terminal. Is this the case ?

[zadjii-msft]

@Surya-06 could you clarify what use case you're looking for? start is a pretty powerful command that ends up calling ShellExecute.

Are you just looking for the ability to open a new terminal in the current directory? That'll work with #4023 and wt -d . Though, opening new panes/tabs in the current Terminal window like that is much trickier.

[Surya-06]

@zadjii-msft I'm trying to clone the current terminal into a new pane. I need the same environment var's etc carried over similar to how 'start' does it in cmd. I know it isn't currently possible but is there a temporary workaround?

[zadjii-msft]

I don't think there is, no. That's actually a pretty good feature request that warrants its own discussion, so I'm going to move it to it's own thread.

[tlmii]

It seems like, at very least, we need an option to specify "current profile" when executing the splitPane action. I can configure different key bindings for each profile, or remember which order they are and use the index. But just having something I can specify on the splitPane action like:

    "keybindings": [
        {
            "keys": ["ctrl+|"],
            "command": {
                "action": "splitPane",
                "split": "vertical",
                "useCurrentProfile": true
            }
        }
    ]

would be good enough. I do think this should be the default ("splitting the current profile into two instances of the same profile") and that keeping the environment between them would be nice. But in the interim, just being able to split the current profile at all would be helpful.

[Surya-06]

@zadjii-msft Hey, has there been any update in this situation? I'm trying to use terminal but this problem is the main blocker preventing me from switching over. It would be great if there was a way around. Thanks !

[zadjii-msft]

@Surya-06 Unfortunately no updates here. I know what needs to be done, and it's not terribly difficult, there's just other work that's a higher priority at the moment unfortunately.

If someone wanted to do this they'd need to:

• add a type argument to the SplitPane action, that accepts two values: (as documented in #998)
  
  
  
  • "manual" (default): Assume that the user provided a profile parameter.
  
  
  • "duplicate": Use the currently focused pane's profile as the profile for the new pane
  
  
  • see ActionArgs.h, ActionArgs.idl, SplitPaneArgs
  
  
• Update the logic in TerminalPage and AppActionHandlers to handle the new type parameter. We'd need to query the active tab to find the active profile if there is one, and use that, instead of the profile that CascadiaSettings::BuildSettings usually finds.
  
  
  
  • See TerminalPage::_HandleSplitPane, TerminalPage::_SplitPane, and CascadiaSettings::BuildSettings would probably also need some modification.
  
  
• Add tests in KeybindingsTests.cpp

[Surya-06]

@zadjii-msft I'd like to take this up in my spare time if it's ok. 😉 I also have a question, from a top level your solution seems to find the current profile but will it carry over all the env vars also ?

[zadjii-msft]

@Surya-06 Go for it 😄

[Surya-06]

@zadjii-msft cool. will work on this. will ping here if I run into any issues. Thanks!

[Surya-06]

@zadjii-msft Hello. I've started working on the project and am making the changes. I could make the changes fine but am unable to test it out since the build has been failing. I don't use visual studio so I'm editing on VS Code and building using cmd. I ran the instructions in dev help and am running into the following error:

I've raised a draft PR: #4683
Can you please provide some help to fix this? Thanks!

[zadjii-msft]

I don't build the _entire_ solution from the commandline myself very often, so I've never seen that particular error. However, I have a feeling that it's basically the same thing as #4211. I bet if you close all your browser windows, you should be able to free up enough memory to get past this step.

Once you get a successful build once, make sure to use bz or bx to avoid doing a clean rebuild on subsequent builds. This error only comes from building the pch.h file, and once it's built once, you shouldn't need to rebuild it unless you change it.

[Surya-06]

I've restarted my machine so that there are no running applications and I have 32gb of physical RAM. It has been several retries already. Is there any way to get around this? The issue only acknowledges the problem and the root cause but I was unable to find a way out.

[zadjii-msft]

Oh well that's pretty unexpected 😕. Do you have VS installed? As much as I don't love using it either, Visual Studio sometimes might be able to provide a better error message for something like this.

[Surya-06]

@zadjii-msft Thanks for the tip. After reinstalling windows SDK and forcing the process to run at highest priority I could build it in the console.

[zadjii-msft]

I'm glad you were able to get it figured out! I can honestly say I've never seen those errors before, so your SDK install must have been pretty messed up 😅

[AVSurfer123]

Are you just looking for the ability to open a new terminal in the current directory? That'll work with #4023 and wt -d . Though, opening new panes/tabs in the current Terminal window like that is much trickier.

@zadjii-msft Is there a way currently to have the new pane have the same working directory as the old pane? I tried doing "startingDirectory": "%__CD__%" for the splitPane keybinding but that failed.

[keithn]

Just chiming in with my thoughts as I just ran into this problem after installing powershell 7 and it's not my default shell... so all my splits end up being my default rather than ps7. I think it should split by forking the active shell as much as possible. But also have an option to change the active splits shell. Also to be able to swap the position of two splits. Also (heh..) to be able to take any shell from any tab and putting it into a split. Also number the splits and have a quick number hotkey jump to split. Also https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/4692 . Also pop split into its own tab.... Also save splits into a profile (remembering size), and then open a split profile which can be configured to automatically run specific programs. Then I think splits will be pretty cool, you can run semi ide like and open tabs with "split pane profiles" with active running terminal programs that are "widgets" (its nice you can resize a pane down to one line) showing timezones / server status / build status etc...