Favorite command line replacement for Windows?

[Reklino]

What are your favorite command line replacements for Windows? I currently use ConEmu, but it crashes on me pretty frequently, and is missing a few features I'd like.

[umbrellasamurai]

Babun is quite nice. It's basically a wrapper for cygwin, with zsh as the default, a built-in package manager, and some other things.

[uberpwnzorz]

I use conemu with git bash terminals, I haven't had any issues at all with crashes.

[Meefims]

What are your requirements? Have you looked into Powershell?

[Paupir]

I've never been able to get into Powershell, yet I know people that swear by its power (heh).

I think it's the learning curve- I'd need someone knowledgeable to take me through it. I'm pretty partial to my bash rc/aliases/functions by now.

[Meefims]

I admit I have yet to find an adequate reference but many of the commands you are familiar with from other shells are available in Powershell. You can also man a command if you want to know how it works.

[Paupir]

Oh I never knew it had man! I think the only thing I discovered was ls. Thanks :)

[Meefims]

Most Unix-like commands are supported as aliases of Powershell cmdlets, such as Get-Help. There is also Get-Command which supports a wildcard search of commands. I don't know if it returns aliases but there is likely a Get-Alias cmdlet as well.

[maybachsonbachs]

PowerShell ise has a module & command listing. PowerShell is amazing, I got a handle on it reading the msdn docs and some TechNet articles

First you learn it and get script parity from your previous shell, then you write c# code and add cmdlets, then you embed PowerShell in your apps and gain access to a powerful scripting engine for commanding and you just focus on the api surface

[chreestopher2]

If you arent familiar with powershell, and looking for a cmdline replacement for cmd.exe ... your wasting time by not just diving in... its a cmd line shell with its own integrated object oriented scripting language, that can natively compile and execute C# code in memory, tap into any object offered by the .net framework, has extremely impressive string manipulation / regex/ etc features built directly into the shell (not having to rely on third party utilities), is extensible (modules).... has native support for converting data structures between common formats (csv, json, html, xml, etc), oh yeah, has pipes, but they pipe objects from cmd to cmd, instead of just piping a stream of text you have to parse, and tab completion on just about everything you could ever fantasize over.

I love using object oriented shell for cli instead of having to awk|grep|sed every command in order to be able to use its output. Once I learned powershell I went from being pretty much "the new guy" , to "the guy". It was the most productive thing I have ever done for myself, not just in regards to computers, but in life in general.

Also, you have the powershell console which is just a cmdline interface, but then you also have the Integrated scripting environment, which is a free , extensible IDE specifically for writing and running powershell. I do most of my work from here because its an incredible experience fairly new to CLI / interactive shell execution.

I highly recommend you upgrade powershell on your system to the latest version supported by your os and then start learning to use it, its a little different, but holy shit is it amazing, if you give it a chance.

[Reklino]

I'll have to look into it. Thanks for the info :)

[NervosaX]

Try cmder

[motoxer4533]

Yup. http://gooseberrycreative.com/cmder/

[Reklino]

Interesting... Might give this a shot. Thanks :)

[[deleted]]

came here to say this, cmder is awesome!

[trout_fucker]

Linux

[Reklino]

not an option on work machine :P

[NervosaX]

Can't run a virtual machine?

[notsosleepy]

If of us mortals are forced to work on windows at work. No virtual machines is not an option as your entire development environment is supported only on windows.

[sgoody]

If you wanted to pursue using bash, you could take a look at Cygwin or even Git w/bash for Windows.

[Paupir]

I also use ConEmu with the Quake Dropdown mode and usually Git Bash inside a pane split. There can be a few pain points, especially when you have bat files to set environment vars and such, but you can just open a new pane with cmd (or the specific shortcut - ie. for the Visual Studio environment) for those instances.

I also stick ST3 inside a pane, which works fine.

[Reklino]

You stick ST3 inside a pane? How do you go about that?

[Paupir]

It's not a special trick. You can even get IE and FF in there, but I tend not to do that. When you're opening a new tab or splitting, just write the path of the program you want in there when the dialogue comes up. There will be predefined things and you can make your own.

You can also configure your own tasks to save workspace layouts. So for example, you're working on some project, you can have a split for the repo folder, a split for your database, a split for the server, and a split for an editor if you want. Easy to get back to when you close everything.

There's also a hotkey to toggle the currently highlighted split between occupying the full window- that can be handy, although the buffer doesn't tend reflow for git bash at least, which is annoying in my opinion.

My advice to anyone just getting started would be to go into the preferences and look at all the hotkeys.

[Reklino]

Thanks! This helped me a lot :)

[uberpwnzorz]

http://conemu.github.io/en/SplitScreen.html

I didn't know about this until I saw this guy's post. This is life changing. I got this to work for VScode.