Configuring eshell and multi-term

SPC ' or SPC p ' displays a popup buffer containing eshell in the current directory of the buffer or project respectively. The position of this popup buffer is configurable.

All the commands available on your usual command line terminal are available in eshell. To close the shell you can use the command exit.

Emacs can run any shell inside a buffer window so you never have to leave Emacs.

Adding the shell layer

eshell is available by adding the shell layer to dotspacemacs-configuration-layers section of ~/.spacemacs.

The shell popup is configured in the dotspacemacs-configure-layers section of the ~/.spacemacs file.

(shell :variables
       shell-default-height 30
       shell-default-position 'bottom)

shell-default-position can be top, bottom, left or right.

shell-default-height defines the percentage of the Spacemacs frame to use.

Customising eshell prompt

You can customize the eshell prompt, although there is nothing specific in Spacemacs.

Praticalli created a custom Eshell prompt. The code can be found in the practicalli/spacemacs.d configuration, the Eshell custom code in dotspacemacs/user-config section.

multi-term - use operating system shell

Use multi-term if you wish to use the default shell in the terminal window from your operating system.

Add the shell-default-shell variable and set to 'multi-term in the shell layer in the ~/.spacemacs file.

Here is an example with the multi-term shell set, along with popup size and location

     (shell :variables
            shell-default-shell 'multi-term
            shell-default-height 30
            shell-default-position 'bottom)

M-m ' now opens a shell buffer as a popup with the default shell of your operating system terminal.

Configure multi-term to use zsh

I have zsh configured for my terminal window which uses prezto to provide extra shell features.

Add the following to dotspacemacs/user-config in your ~/.spacemacs file

(setq multi-term-program "/usr/bin/zsh")

SPC f s to save the ~/.spacemacs file.

SPC f e R to reload the configuration, or SPC q r to restart Spacemacs.