How do we access the terminal in micro, to build or compile code?

[shubham0204]

Micro is a great, efficient text editor. I've worked on Rust, C++ and Python codebases with micro, and the only feature I felt missing was the ability to open an instance of the terminal (bash) within micro to run commands like python <script-name> or gcc main.c -o main or cargo run which would execute the code I was editing.

Upon a quick search on the internet, I found this gist that makes the mention of Alt + b as a custom key binding to build code. However, I was not able to find a reference in the official wiki provided by the micro community.

It would be great if the community can help me navigate through the problem or suggest a solution/work-around.

[Andriamanitra]

You can do term in the micro command prompt to open a terminal in a new tab within micro. I find that it doesn't work that well with my setup though (the colors are off and my shell keybindings conflict with micro keybindings), so I prefer to use a plugin that calls shell.RunInteractiveShell which completely replaces micro with the given command (temporarily).

[shubham0204]

@Andriamanitra Thank you for suggesting the use of term. For Windows, micro shows a message 'Terminal Emulator not supported` whereas it works on Ubuntu (WSL). Also, could you guide me on how to use the plugin you've mentioned?

[Andriamanitra]

A minimal example would look something like this (put this code in your init.lua)

local config = import("micro/config")
local shell = import("micro/shell")

function init()
    -- this line adds a command "shell" that you can run in the micro command prompt
    config.MakeCommand("shell", run_shell, config.NoComplete)
end

function run_shell(bufpane)
    -- you can replace "bash" with any executable of your choice
    -- the true means run in the foreground
    -- the false means send output to stdout (instead of returning it)
    shell.RunInteractiveShell("bash", true, false)
end

You can make it as fancy as you want, for example I have set it up so I have a keybinding F5 that runs a different executable depending on currently open filetype

[dustdfg]

You also can use default keybinding Ctrl+b to run simple one line commands

You also mentioned official docs. If you are about official docs about keybindigs and how to work with them so... Press Ctrl+g to open docs

They will tell you that you can press Ctrl+e to run internal micro commands. You need to type there help, spcace and tab and micro will ask you what part of docs you want. You need keybindings so just type it and you will see everything about keybindings

[shubham0204]

@dustdfg For me Ctrl+b seems to do the job perfectly well.