Create more than one eshell instance in emacs

Question

Think: tiling my emacs window with eshells, a la xmonad. Is this possible? I can M-x eshell to open the first eshell instance but future invocations just focus the first instance.

score 14 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '10 at 20:36

14

You can do this:

`C-u M-x eshell`

This will create *eshell*, *eshell*<2>, and so on.

answered Mar 29 '10 at 20:36

Chris R

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score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 29 '10 at 21:52

My preferred approach is to create named shells:

(defun make-shell (name)
  "Create a shell buffer named NAME."
  (interactive "sName: ")
  (setq name (concat "$" name))
  (eshell)
  (rename-buffer name))

is the gist. Then M-x make-shell name will create the desired shell.

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 29 '10 at 20:26

4

The docstring for eshell states that "A nonnumeric prefix arg means to create a new session." I typed M-- M-x eshell over and over, and each time it opened a new eshell buffer.

answered Mar 29 '10 at 20:26

Sean

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Damn. Your comment hadn't been written when I started my answer :) – Chris R Mar 29 '10 at 20:56

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

1

C-u M-x eshell works great, but I prefer named shells - make-shell approach, is useful when switching buffers

edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Community

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answered May 18 '11 at 06:10

Jeevan Pingali

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 06 '14 at 01:52

Mybe, the following solution is better. Because the eshell buffer is determined by the value of eshell-buffer-name. You need not to rename the buffer.

(defun buffer-exists (bufname)   
  (not (eq nil (get-buffer bufname))))

(defun make-shell (name)
  "Create a shell buffer named NAME."
  (interactive "sName: ")
  (if (buffer-exists "*eshell*")
      (setq eshell-buffer-name name)
    (message "eshell doesnot exists, use the default name: *eshell*"))
  (eshell))

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

0

Expanding on make-eshell, this creates an eshell appending the next counter, so it's like eshell1, eshell2, etc.:

(lexical-let ((count 1))
  (defun make-eshell-next-number ()
    (interactive)
    (eshell)
    (rename-buffer (concat "*eshell" (number-to-string count) "*"))
    (setq count (1+ count))))

edited May 23 '17 at 11:59

Community

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answered Nov 21 '15 at 01:35

Nick

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 10 '10 at 10:40

0

Invoking GNU Screen is another option for those using ansi-term

answered Nov 10 '10 at 10:40

konr

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 17 '23 at 05:29

Here is my implementation of new eshell buffer / instance.

(defun eshell-new-buffer (args)
  "Create a new eshell buffer."
  (interactive "P")
  (eshell "new")
  )


(global-set-key (kbd "C-c e e") 'eshell)

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c e n") 'eshell-new-buffer)

Create more than one eshell instance in emacs

8 Answers8