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Feature request: Run command instead of shell
Status:
RESOLVED: FIXED
Severity:
enhancement
Product:
Xfce4-terminal
Component:
General

Comments

Description Hugo 2016-12-15 15:31:48 CET
One feature found in other terminal emulators that I really miss in Xfce Terminal is being able to run a custom command when the terminal is launched. I use this to tell my terminals to use the fish shell instead of the default bash that comes with my system.

So far, the workarounds I have for this have some unfortunate limitations:

* The "--command" command line flag works fine for the first terminal window I open but if I open additional windows with Ctrl+Shift+N it will ignore this command line flag and just use the default shell again. (I guess this could also be seen as a bug). I also need to edit a bunch of places to add this command line (the preferred applications settings, my applications menu, etc), which is a lot of work.

* If I switch my login shell with chsh then my distro gets confused because it put some important things in my .bashrc and that doesn't get run anymore.

I would be willing to try to code this myself if the maintainers are in favor of adding this feature.
Comment 1 Igor editbugs 2016-12-15 16:19:24 CET
The funny thing is that xfce4-terminal used to have this functionality but it was dropped in 0.1.6 with the following wording:
- Custom command functionality was removed from Terminal, because it is
  rather useless, now that Terminal offers -x/--execute command line
  options.

I can understand your issues with using the command line option, and maybe this functionality is indeed worth of bringing back.

> * The "--command" command line flag works fine for the first terminal window I
> open but if I open additional windows with Ctrl+Shift+N it will ignore this
> command line flag and just use the default shell again. (I guess this could
> also be seen as a bug).

I think it's per design as the terminal help is saying this option is a per tab setting. You can open another window by running the command again, or start two windows at once by running `xfce4-terminal -e "/bin/fish" --window -e "/bin/fish"`.
Comment 2 Hugo 2016-12-15 16:53:45 CET
(In reply to Igor from comment #1)
> You can open another window by running the command again, or
> start two windows at once by running `xfce4-terminal -e "/bin/fish" --window
> -e "/bin/fish"`.

All in all, the thing that I miss the most is being able to open a new tab with Ctrl+Shift+T or a new tab with Ctrl+Shift+N and have it also be using the fish shell instead of reverting to bash as it does right now.

Since the "-e" flag is a per-tab setting (and it seems that there is good reason for that) then it means that it is not the ideal place to put a custom shell command that needs to be run on every window, as the first thing that gets run.

Just running the command again instead of opening a new window or tab is much less ideal because the working directory goes all the way back to my home directory instead of keeping the same directory that I was using before. It also means that I can't really take advantage of the new tabs feature, since it always goes back to bash...

> The funny thing is that xfce4-terminal used to have this functionality but
> it was dropped in 0.1.6 with the following wording:
> - Custom command functionality was removed from Terminal, because it is
>   rather useless, now that Terminal offers -x/--execute command line
>   options.

On the positive side, I guess it means that bringing it back would be easier since we could use the old code as a guide :)
Comment 3 Igor editbugs 2016-12-15 17:05:59 CET
Yes, I think the custom command functionality is indeed worth adding. The -e/-x options can remain for single tab or fine tuning cases while this functionality could be used on a regular basis.

Would you like to provide a patch? I mean I could definitely make it but I will give you the wall if you want to do it :)
Comment 4 Hugo 2016-12-17 20:06:58 CET
Oh well, I tried to work on a patch but spent the whole day trying to get Glade to work with the Xfce stuff, without success :(

I think I might have to look for other ways to contribute for now.
Comment 5 Igor editbugs 2016-12-18 17:07:57 CET
(In reply to Hugo from comment #4)
> Oh well, I tried to work on a patch but spent the whole day trying to get
> Glade to work with the Xfce stuff, without success :(
> 
> I think I might have to look for other ways to contribute for now.

OK, it's fine :)

Implemented by https://git.xfce.org/apps/xfce4-terminal/commit/?id=9c168d3a8dc8741cdb7368aed6b86bff925fb5e9

Bug #13236

Reported by:
Hugo
Reported on: 2016-12-15
Last modified on: 2016-12-18

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1 user

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unspecified

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