term/vterm

Table of Contents

• Description
  • Module Flags
  • Plugins
• Prerequisites
  • Dynamic Module support
  • libvterm
  • Compilation tools for vterm-module.so

Description

This module provides a terminal emulator powered by libvterm. It is still in alpha and requires a component be compiled (vterm-module.so).

The following commands are available to open it:

• +vterm/toggle (SPC o t): Toggle vterm pop up window in the current project
• +vterm/here (SPC o T): Opens vterm in the current window

Module Flags

This module provides no flags.

Plugins

• vterm

Prerequisites

• Emacs must be built with dynamic module support, i.e. compiled with the --with-modules option.
• You need libvterm installed on your system.
• You need make, cmake and a C compiler such as gcc so that vterm can build vterm-module.so.

Dynamic Module support

To check if your build of Emacs was built with dynamic module support, check bin/doom info for MODULES next to “System features”. If it’s there, you’re good to go.

You can also check for --with-modules in the system-configuration-options variable (SPC h v system-configuration-options).

• Archlinux or Manjaro users who installed Emacs through pacman will have support baked in.
• MacOS users:
  • If you use Emacs For Mac OS X, this option is enabled.
  • If you use emacs-plus, this option is enabled by default.
  • If you use emacs-mac, this options is not enabled by default. You may have to reinstall emacs with the option: brew install emacs-mac --with-modules

libvterm

• Ubuntu or Debian users: apt-get install libvterm-dev
• ArchLinux or Manjaro: pacman -S libvterm
• MacOS: libvterm
• NixOS:

  systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    # emacs    # no need for this, the next line includes emacs
    ((emacsPackagesNgGen emacs).emacsWithPackages (epkgs: [
      epkgs.vterm
    ]))
  ];
      

  Or for home-manager users:

  programs.emacs = {
    enable = true;
    extraPackages = epkgs: [ epkgs.vterm ];
  };
      

  This already contains a version of vterm-module.so, so NixOS users need not compile the module themselves as described below.

  Note: The nixpkgs-version that is used needs to be compatible with the rest of the plugins installed in doom. Therefore it might be necessary to pull in emacs and/or emacsPackagesNgGen from unstable or another channel. Otherwise arbitrary functionality of vterm might not work.

Compilation tools for vterm-module.so

When you first load vterm, it will compile vterm-module.so for you. For this to succeed, you need the following:

• make
• cmake
• A C compiler like gcc
• An internet connection (cmake will download needed libraries)

There are several ways to manually install the module:

1. You can use M-x vterm-module-compile to let emacs automatically compile and install the module.

   Modify vterm-module-cmake-args to pass arguments to the cmake build script. e.g. To use a local build of libvterm instead of the included one.

   (setq vterm-module-cmake-args "-DUSE_SYSTEM_LIBVTERM=yes")
       

   WARNING: Emacs will hang during the compilation. It may take a while.

2. You can compile and install the module yourself. Go to the vterm installation directory (usually ~/.emacs.d/.local/packages/elpa/vterm-<version>) and run the following:

   mkdir -p build
   cd build
   cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo ..
   make
       

3. You can also compile vterm-module.so elsewhere, but the module must be moved/symlinked to ~/.emacs.d/.local/packages/elpa/vterm-<version>/vterm-module.so vterm-module.so. Keep in mind that this folder will be deleted whenever the vterm package is updated.