Book Image

Windows Terminal Tips, Tricks, and Productivity Hacks

By : Will Fuqua
5 (1)
Book Image

Windows Terminal Tips, Tricks, and Productivity Hacks

5 (1)
By: Will Fuqua

Overview of this book

Windows Terminal is a new and open-source command-line application for Windows 10, built for the Command Prompt, PowerShell, Windows Subsystem for Linux, and more. It's fast, modern, and configurable thanks to its GPU-accelerated rendering, excellent UTF-8 support, and JSON-based configurability, and this book can help you learn how to leverage these features. You’ll start by learning the benefits of Windows Terminal and its open-source development, as well as how to use the built-in tabs, panes, and key bindings to build your own efficient terminal workflows. After you’ve mastered Windows Terminal, this book shows how to use and configure PowerShell Core and the Windows Subsystem for Linux within Windows Terminal. You’ll maximize your productivity using powerful tools such as PSReadLine for PowerShell and ZSH on Linux, and discover useful tips and tricks for common developer tools like Git and SSH. Finally, you’ll see how Windows Terminal can be used in common development and DevOps tasks, such as developing frontend JavaScript applications and backend REST APIs, and managing cloud-based systems like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. By the end of this book, you'll not only be well-versed with Windows Terminal, but also have learned how to effectively use shells like PowerShell Core and ZSH to become proficient at the command line.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introducing the New Windows Terminal
5
Section 2: Configuring your Windows Terminal and its shells
12
Section 3: Using your Windows Terminal for development

Preface

Windows Terminal is a modern and open source command-line program for Windows 10, built for Command Prompt, PowerShell, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2), and more. It's fast and flexible, but to use it effectively we need to understand both Windows Terminal and the shells that run inside it. We'll explore these technologies in detail throughout the three sections of this book.

We'll start by covering the benefits of Windows Terminal, including its GPU-accelerated rendering and JSON-based configurability. We'll learn how to use and customize the built-in tabs, panes, and key bindings to drive our own beautiful and efficient terminal workflows.

Next, we'll show how to use PowerShell Core and the Windows Subsystem for Linux within Windows Terminal. We'll maximize our productivity using powerful tools such as PSReadLine on PowerShell and ZSH on Linux, and pick up some time-saving tricks for common developer tools such as Git and SSH.

Finally, we'll see how Windows Terminal can be used in common development and DevOps tasks, such as developing frontend JavaScript applications and backend REST APIs and controlling Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud.

By the end of this book, we'll not only be experts on Windows Terminal, but we'll also know how to use shells such as PowerShell Core and ZSH to become proficient through the command line.