CLI set default terminal

25 votes

Add the ability to set the default terminal (bash, sh, powershell, cmd).

Planned Suggested by: Mihail (24 Sep, '21) • Upvoted: 15 Mar • Comments: 5

Comments: 5

28 Sep, '21
Vladislav Javadov
I'm wondering why they've decided to use different terminals on different OSes. For Git, there is no option except bash. That's universal for use and support, and requires less work for GitKraken Team.
05 Oct, '21
Mike
I was going to add a feature request to enable support for PowerShell 7 (pwsh.exe), but this feature request should be able to cover that.

The docs at https://support.gitkraken.com/working-with-repositories/terminal/ say:

> Note: The following shells are available depending on operating system: PowerShell for Windows, ZSH/Bash for Mac and Linux. The GitKraken Terminal utilizes your operating system's default shell. To switch shells you'll need to set the new shell as default in your operating system settings and restart your computer for auto-complete to continue working as expected

Leaving it up to the OS to set the default shell is the primary issue. Windows doesn't really let you set the default shell other than choosing either cmd or PowerShell via the Taskbar Setting: "Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell in the menu when I right-click the start button or press Windows key+X".

If GitKraken let us specify the path to our chosen shell, that would be great!
02 Mar, '22
Dan L
I'd add that I wasn't able to get the current "Custom Terminal Command" option to launch PowerShell 7 (pwsh.exe) on Windows 10. I can see the process spawned (through cmd.exe - suboptimal) but none of it is visible on the screen.
05 Feb, '23
Guy R
GitKraken 9.0.1 on Windows seems to be hard-wired to PowerShell. On Windows 7, that's Powershell 5.0. I'd rather just use the default command processor. cmd.exe. I tried entering that in Custom Terminal Command, but that doesn't accomplish anything. Once Powershell runs, I can simply type cmd to get into that shell. Don't understand why Custom Terminal Command doesn't seem to do anything.

After posting this, I found this page: https://help.gitkraken.com/gitkraken-client/preferences/

Following instructions there, I changed my Custom Terminal Command to "start "" "C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe"". That works from File - Open External Terminal. View - Show Terminal Panel still is using Powershell 5. So, I'm concluding that Custom Terminal Command affects only external terminals, and not the integrated one.
01 May, '23
Aleksander Stelmaczonek
Well, I am in a situation on KDE Kubuntu where things don't exactly work if my default shell is not bash. However, in my terminal application, I have set zsh as the default profile. So, my system default is bash, but I use zsh without having to manually launch zsh from bash.

Ideally, GitKraken could do the same, instead of using system default shell, launch shell provided by user in the settings (which could still be system defautl by default). I don't see any harm to the product since GitKraken already claims to support zsh, and the user can still have any unsupported shell as the system default.