Sublime Forum

Will ST support terminal in the future?

#1

Will (or when will) ST support integrated terminal, like Visual Studio Code, and Pycharm?

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#2

I have a pretty cool PoC for a full Sublime shell based on my SublimeXiki concept, but haven’t gotten a chance to flesh it out yet.

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#3

The devs don’t really publish future plans. However, integrating non-editor features like this usually isn’t their MO. I wouldn’t hold my breath for this to ever happen.

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#4

If you happen to be on Linux or OSX you can use TerminalView.

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#5

I doubt it as it’s not a feature of a text editor.

VS Code is somewhere between IDE and editor but swaying more towards editor which is why it can be found there and not here.

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#6

A Terminal is an integral part of development these days, whether you are writing C/C++, HTML/CSS/JS , PHP/RUBY/PYTHON/LUA. I wonder why the devs (or some learned members of the community ) are not interested in having a terminal view within ST? Wes Bos who moved from ST to VS Code recently hailed how easy it is to use terminal in VS Code. Jeffrey Way also has made positive comments about it’s usage. I am sure there are other developers who have also used in ATOM and VS Code and hailed its importance.

ST is a developers tool. It must and should support tools that aid developers. A terminal is such a tool. It is true that there are plugins like TerminalView which you can use to employ but it works on Linux and Mac only. Windows developers are left in the ditch with no support.

I believe, there is a genuine case for a terminal view within ST. Plugins are great, but they can do so much as much as the Sublime Plugin API allows them to do.Besides a quality of a plugin can be debated. Is the Terminal plugin stealing my creds when I type them in? I had to uninstall SideBarEnahncements after I read what it was trying to do. An inbuilt , well-baked editor view within ST will go a long way among us developers.

Indeed, there are a few developers here, who like to keep ST minimal. Well for those developers, a terminal option to hide it would suffice.

I would like to think, that I have made my point, but let’s see how it goes.

Thank you.

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#7

My observation is that it seems like Windows has a culture where users want to maximise every window. If a window takes up the whole screen, then the only way to have more functionality immediately available is to cram it all into the same application.

I would rather simply not maximise windows, and use multiple applications as peers on the screen.

MinTTY, which comes with the Git-for-Windows installer, is a wonderful Unix style terminal application.

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#8

Yeah, it seems a bit of a Windows convention to have monolithic GUI applications. Perhaps stemming from the window management and going full screen on everything all the time. MacOS and Linux have always used floating widgets and panels, so switching between applications is always as easy as switching widgets. So there is less need to integrate everything. On Windows it’s impossible to manage floating widgets, and it sucks everything including peripheral functionality into the main GUI.

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#9

I am not sure about that. But most developers who are on mac have liked it, including industry giants I mentioned above. I think we are just trying to find reasons why NOT to implement it. :slight_smile:

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#10

The single reason not to implement it is opportunity cost. Of course, it would be nice if sublime text was the tool to “rule them all” and would do anything from undeleting your erroneously removed files, taking care of your daughter in the evenings and looking into the future, but that all come with the cost of not being able to spend time on other more important features or Bugfixes.

Personally, I use a tiling window manager and have always used a terminal or console window on my second monitor, which I find way more convenient than having a handicapped emulated terminal inside my text editor. The only advantages of a terminal within st would be syntax highlighting and completions, but modern shells like zsh or fish are pretty capable of that already.

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#11

Thank you for proving me correct. I was somehow expecting this kind of a diatribe. Between taking care of my daughter and a lowly ST feature request, my daughter will always win, so relax sir .

If the single reason not to implement is cost, what is stopping Mr Skinner and Mr Bond to hire more people ? ST is not a free editor and users (including yours truly ) have suggested increasing the price of editor so that more and enough developmental releases are brought forth.

In your haste to bring down the request, you, dear sir, forgot to read, what I said for people who like a minimal editor. ST authors could provide an option to hide/disable the terminal view, so that you can use your terminal.

Sorry, if I was rude. I rest my case.

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#12

The more people working/accessing the code, greater the danger of the source code leaking. Thought, I am not sure how microsoft does that. Even discarding this, I am not sure how much is the budget Sublime Text has or could have for new hires. Hiring someone is pretty expensive, as for working with C++ would required someone very experienced (not freshman/rookies), which would require a big budget 120~240.000 USD year.

Let count, 240.000 / 70 ~= 3.500 Sublime Text licenses sold per year, per new employee. Counting also Jon, Will and Kari, would do 14.000 licences sold per year. But the costs are not just their salaries, but high government fees, taxes (+10.000 licenses for the government = 24.000 licences of expense per year), and a very big reserve budget for when the Sublime Text licences sales goes down. I would put like 10 years of reserve money on this budget (24.000*10 = 240.000 licences on reserve money), so Jon can keep up working for a long period if something goes really down and not much new licences would sold out.

Counting everything together would cost ( 240.000 + 24.000) * 70 = 18.480.000 USD to backup a good Sublime Text Team. So, just adding a new programmer is not just something which can be done without a great expense. Also, you cannot just increase the license price and expect you would make more money. You can read this post by Joel Spolsky, Stackoverflow’s CEO: Camels and Rubber Duckies, it explains:

One of the biggest questions you’re going to be asking now is, “How much should I charge for my software?” When you ask the experts they don’t seem to know. Pricing is a deep, dark mystery, they tell you. The biggest mistake software companies make is charging too little, so they don’t get enough income, and they have to go out of business. An even bigger mistake, yes, even bigger than the biggest mistake, is charging too much, so they don’t get enough customers, and they have to go out of business. Going out of business is not good because everybody loses their job, and you have to go work at Wal*Mart as a greeter, earning minimum wage and being forced to wear a polyester uniform all day long.

We don’t want Jon working at Wal*mart, right?

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#13

I only want terminal features like being able to input data when running a program with the Build System and being able to run terminal animations like:

  1. https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/1468 Full/complete terminal features on Sublime Text

I would not use a built in terminal to cd elsewhere and run applications other than the ones I call with the build command. For these other things I already got:

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#14

If he wishes to work @Walmart, nothing should be stopping him not even us.

Now let us get into the facts (speaking from a Canadian perspective).
Mr Jon lives in Australia. I am 100% sure that the Aussie government provides subsidies and assistance to employers who wish to increase the workforce. A little search gives me this.
In Canada, we also get assistance if you are doing scientific research (for example developing algorithims and whatnot). I believe this is the same case with Australia.
Also, you get additional benefits if you are a small company in form of tax benefits. A small company also gets benefits to buy office equipment, travel expenses among other things.

Now - talking from an employer perspective.
Recently, I have become eligible to hire people. I was given this advice by a person well versed, with hiring and a very popular manager - that you should initially ask people whom you have hired to write unit tests only. Two things happen that way

  1. Your devs are now free to work on other important things
  2. Your new dev becomes well versed with the code flows.
  3. A college dropout can be as smart as a person having 10 year of experience. The way you conduct your interview is of paramount importance.
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#15

I think you do not understood what I meant to when I said Wal*mart:

even bigger than the biggest mistake, is charging too much, so they don’t get enough customers, and they have to go out of business. Going out of business is not good because everybody loses their job, and you have to go work at Wal*Mart as a greeter, earning minimum wage and being forced to wear a polyester uniform all day long.

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#16

I apologize sir

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#17

It’s an awesome plugin, a must have.

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