M-x shell question

M-x shell question

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I'm thinking that M-x shell should cd the subshell
to the current directory of the buffer you're in
when you type M-x shell.  I often want to do that.

Or perhaps C-u M-x shell should do that.

The current behavior of C-u M-x shell, to use a different buffer name
for the shell buffer, is not very useful; if you want to make multiple
shell buffers, the easiest way is to make each one as *shell* and
rename it.

Is anyone against?



-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: M-x shell question

[raman]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

1+ -- I implemented myself a different shell command specifically for
this case and bound it to a key:

(defun emacspeak-wizards-shell-toggle ()
  "Switch to the shell buffer and cd to
 the directory of the current buffer."
  (interactive)
  (declare (special default-directory))
  (let ((dir default-directory))
    (shell)
    (unless (string-equal (expand-file-name dir)
                          (expand-file-name default-directory))
      (goto-char (point-max))
      (insert (format "pushd %s" dir))
      (comint-send-input)
      (shell-process-cd dir))
    (emacspeak-auditory-icon 'select-object)
    (emacspeak-speak-mode-line)))


> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> I'm thinking that M-x shell should cd the subshell
> to the current directory of the buffer you're in
> when you type M-x shell.  I often want to do that.
>
> Or perhaps C-u M-x shell should do that.
>
> The current behavior of C-u M-x shell, to use a different buffer name
> for the shell buffer, is not very useful; if you want to make multiple
> shell buffers, the easiest way is to make each one as *shell* and
> rename it.
>
> Is anyone against?

-- 

Re: M-x shell question

[Uwe Brauer]

>>> "raman" == raman  <raman@google.com> writes:

   > Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
   > 1+ -- I implemented myself a different shell command specifically for
   > this case and bound it to a key:


That function depends on emacspeak, why?


   > (defun emacspeak-wizards-shell-toggle ()    >   "Switch to the shell buffer and cd to
   >  the directory of the current buffer."
   >   (interactive)
   >   (declare (special default-directory))

What is this declare call good for?


   >   (let ((dir default-directory))
   >     (shell)
   >     (unless (string-equal (expand-file-name dir)
   >                           (expand-file-name default-directory))
   >       (goto-char (point-max))
   >       (insert (format "pushd %s" dir))
   >       (comint-send-input)
   >       (shell-process-cd dir))
   >     (emacspeak-auditory-icon 'select-object)
   >     (emacspeak-speak-mode-line)))

Re: M-x shell question

[raman]

Because it's part of emacspeak -- for a generic function, it obviously
doesn't need to.

Re: M-x shell question

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Your function seems to do basically what I want (I think cd is better
than pushd for this).  I've put it in my .emacs, but I think it should
be a standard feature -- perhaps as M-x cdshell.

Does anyone disagree?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Fwd: M-x shell question

[Kaushal Modi]

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Following the convention of keeping the package name as the first part of
the command name, may be the command should be named 'shell-cd'?

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
Date: Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: M-x shell question
To: raman <raman@google.com>
Cc: <emacs-devel@gnu.org>


[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

Your function seems to do basically what I want (I think cd is better
than pushd for this).  I've put it in my .emacs, but I think it should
be a standard feature -- perhaps as M-x cdshell.

Does anyone disagree?
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Following the convention of keeping the package name as the first part of
  > the command name, may be the command should be named 'shell-cd'?

That name is logical, but inconvenient: you have to type s h e SPC SPC c d.

'shell-this-directory' is almost as inconvenient: s h e SPC SPC t.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 1:29 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> That name is logical, but inconvenient: you have to type s h e SPC SPC c d.
>
> 'shell-this-directory' is almost as inconvenient: s h e SPC SPC t.
>

I believe that keeping package name as first part of the command improves
discoverability. If I were to look into what all commands are available
related to 'shell', I can easily come across 'shell-cd' or 'shell-foo'
 with packages like ido or counsel or helm and start using it. But if the
command is 'cd-shell', that reduces the discoverability (unless you have
the fuzzy search enabled in packages like ido).

I would just bind 'shell-cd' to a binding (like "C-c d s" maybe? :) ), if I
find myself using it very often. But naming it 'cd-shell' just so that it
comes up with lesser chars to type for guessing the right command doesn't
seem like a permanent solution to access that command quickly. What if
tomorrow we have more commands starting with 'cds'? Again, having
'cd-shell' show up as the best match for 'c d s' is very subjective. It is
very useful to people using 'cd-shell' or 'shell-cd' regularly, but
probably not to others.

What do you think?
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 05:49:15 +0000
> Cc: raman@google.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 1:29 AM Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
>  That name is logical, but inconvenient: you have to type s h e SPC SPC c d.
> 
>  'shell-this-directory' is almost as inconvenient: s h e SPC SPC t.
> 
> I believe that keeping package name as first part of the command improves discoverability. If I were to look
> into what all commands are available related to 'shell', I can easily come across 'shell-cd' or 'shell-foo' with
> packages like ido or counsel or helm and start using it. But if the command is 'cd-shell', that reduces the
> discoverability (unless you have the fuzzy search enabled in packages like ido).
> 
> I would just bind 'shell-cd' to a binding (like "C-c d s" maybe? :) ), if I find myself using it very often.

We could also have an alias for faster typing.

Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Robert Weiner]

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On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 1:49 AM, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com>
wrote:

> But if the command is 'cd-shell', that reduces the discoverability


​Just use {M-x apropos RET} which will find either 'cd' or 'shell​'.  There
is no need to use add-on packages for this.  Many Emacs command names still
use a verb-noun ordering rather than a prefix-verb ordering, so in that
sense, cd-shell works fine.  This could just be an alias as well if all of
the other shell related commands start with shell-.

Bob

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Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 9:22 AM Robert Weiner <rsw@gnu.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 1:49 AM, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> But if the command is 'cd-shell', that reduces the discoverability
>
>
> ​Just use {M-x apropos RET} which will find either 'cd' or 'shell​'.
> There is no need to use add-on packages for this.  Many Emacs command names
> still use a verb-noun ordering rather than a prefix-verb ordering, so in
> that sense, cd-shell works fine.  This could just be an alias as well if
> all of the other shell related commands start with shell-.
>

It all boils down to your workflow .. Instead of doing M-x apropos or M-x
apropos-command and go through 10's or 100's of results, I prefer using
counsel-M-x from the counsel package. Below shows me all commands that
begin with 'shell'. Note that I intentionally use regexp here.. I have
"^shell" instead of just "shell", so it shows me only the commands that
begin with "shell". Once I have that list, I pick one and hit return.
That's it.

[image: pasted1]
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Robert Weiner]

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On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:14 AM, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I wrote: This could just be an alias as well if all of the other shell
>> related commands start with shell-.
>>
>
> I have "^shell" instead of just "shell", so it shows me only the commands
> that begin with "shell". Once I have that list, I pick one and hit return.
> That's it.
>

A
​propos accepts regular expressions as well, so you don't need counsel to
get similar behavior.  As I said, one of the command names could start with
shell-.

Bob

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Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:36 AM Robert Weiner <rsw@gnu.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Aug 19, 2016 at 10:14 AM, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I wrote: This could just be an alias as well if all of the other shell
>>> related commands start with shell-.
>>>
>>
>> I have "^shell" instead of just "shell", so it shows me only the commands
>> that begin with "shell". Once I have that list, I pick one and hit return.
>> That's it.
>>
>
> A
> ​propos accepts regular expressions as well, so you don't need counsel to
> get similar behavior.  As I said, one of the command names could start with
> shell-.
>

As I said, it's preference. I meant to emphasize this in my previous email:

I prefer:

*Once I have that list, I pick one and hit return. That's it.*

I like the speed:
http://i.imgur.com/OP1RR8c.gifv

rather than:

1. M-x apropos-command (or C-h a)
2. Find the command I want after scrolling through a possible multi-page
buffer
3. M-x command-I-found
4. Repeat 1-2 till I find the right command
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: Fwd: M-x shell question

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2016 01:29:41 -0400
> Cc: raman@google.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
>   > Following the convention of keeping the package name as the first part of
>   > the command name, may be the command should be named 'shell-cd'?
> 
> That name is logical, but inconvenient: you have to type s h e SPC SPC c d.

s-cd should also work.  (Welcome to the improved completion in Emacs
24.)

> 'shell-this-directory' is almost as inconvenient: s h e SPC SPC t.

You can use s-thi instead.

Re: M-x shell question

[Oleh Krehel]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Your function seems to do basically what I want (I think cd is better
> than pushd for this).  I've put it in my .emacs, but I think it should
> be a standard feature -- perhaps as M-x cdshell.
>
> Does anyone disagree?

I like the idea. I do the same thing in two steps in my config:

1. "C-x C-j" calls `dired-jump' globally.
2. "`" calls `cdshell' in `dired-mode'.

This way, I can quickly adjust the path in `dired'.

Oleh

Re: M-x shell question

[Andreas Schwab]

On Aug 18 2016, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> Your function seems to do basically what I want (I think cd is better
> than pushd for this).  I've put it in my .emacs, but I think it should
> be a standard feature -- perhaps as M-x cdshell.

shell-this-directory

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SUSE Labs, schwab@suse.de
GPG Key fingerprint = 0196 BAD8 1CE9 1970 F4BE  1748 E4D4 88E3 0EEA B9D7
"And now for something completely different."

Re: M-x shell question

[Tino Calancha]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Andreas Schwab wrote:

> shell-this-directory
+1

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, raman wrote:

> after landing in the shell if I didn't want to be in the directory
> of the buffer from whence I came, then the most common thing I wanted
> was to go back to where it had been.
It has sense.
How about a new option controling if pushd or cd is used?
For instance: shell-this-directory-push-or-cd

Tino

Re: M-x shell question

[raman]

I went back and forth with respect to pushd vs cd when I wrote this
(approx 10+ years ago from memory).

I stayed  with pushd after changing  back and forth because   I found
that after landing in the shell if I didn't want to be in the directory
of the buffer from whence I came, then the most common thing I wanted
was to go back to where it had been.

-- 

Re: M-x shell question

[Robert Weiner]

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On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 1:45 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
> I'm thinking that M-x shell should cd the subshell
> to the current directory of the buffer you're in
> when you type M-x shell.  I often want to do that.
>

​It does do that when it creates a new shell buffer.  Typically, that is
the only time I want it to do that as I work with buffers in many different
directories and then come back to the same shell that I want pointing to
the same directory.​


>
> Or perhaps C-u M-x shell should do that.
>
> The current behavior of C-u M-x shell, to use a different buffer name
> for the shell buffer, is not very useful; if you want to make multiple
> shell buffers, the easiest way is to make each one as *shell* and
> rename it.
>

​I like being able to quickly create multiple shells without having to
rename them, so I do think this behavior is useful.

I think a new command would be appropriate in this case that did both the
cd and the jump to the shell buffer, maybe cd-shell.

Bob

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Re: M-x shell question

[Andreas Schwab]

On Aug 17 2016, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

> I'm thinking that M-x shell should cd the subshell
> to the current directory of the buffer you're in
> when you type M-x shell.  I often want to do that.

Emacs doesn't know what the shell is currently running, sending a cd
command may not do what you want.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756  01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5
"And now for something completely different."

Re: M-x shell question

[Roland Winkler]

On Wed, Aug 17 2016, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> Emacs doesn't know what the shell is currently running, sending a cd
> command may not do what you want.

For many years I have been using the command below.  If the shell
appears to be busy, this command puts "cd dir" into the input history,
which makes the shell command available via comint-previous-input.


(defun my-shell (&optional buffer)
  "Use `default-directory' of current buffer as working dir of `*shell*' buffer.
Also, switch to `*shell*' buffer.
Optional arg BUFFER has same meaning as for command `shell'."
  (interactive ; code taken from `shell'
   (list
    (if current-prefix-arg
        (read-buffer "Shell buffer: "
                     (generate-new-buffer-name "*shell*")))))
  (unless default-directory
    (error "default-directory of current buffer is nil"))
  (let ((edir (expand-file-name default-directory))
        (cdir (concat "cd " (abbreviate-file-name default-directory))))
    (shell (get-buffer-create (or buffer "*shell*")))
    ;; change directory, unless we are already where we want to be
    (unless (string= edir (expand-file-name default-directory))
      (goto-char (point-max))
      (if (looking-back comint-prompt-regexp nil)
          (progn (insert cdir)
                 (comint-send-input))
        (message "shell `%s' seems to be busy, cannot change directory"
                 (buffer-name))
        (comint-add-to-input-history cdir)))))

Re: M-x shell question

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Emacs doesn't know what the shell is currently running, sending a cd
  > command may not do what you want.

That's true, but it's a problem only if plain M-x shell is the way to
do this.  If the user explicitly says when to do this, the user
will judge when.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.