How do I use Bash on Windows from the Visual Studio Code integrated terminal

Question

Visual Studio Code on Windows uses PowerShell by default as the integrated terminal  If you want to use Bash from Visual Studio Code  what steps should be followed

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This answer is similar to the top voted answer, but with an important distinction: a lot of the previous answers on this question focus on running Git Bash while my answer focuses on running WSL Bash.

Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux on your Windows 10 machine.
Open Visual Studio Code and press and hold Ctrl + ` to open the terminal.
Open the command palette using Ctrl + Shift + P.
Type - Select Default Shell.
Select WSL Bash (NOT Git Bash) from the options.

Click on the + icon in the terminal window. The new terminal now will be a WSL Bash terminal!

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Add the Git bin directory to the Path environment variable  The directory is  ProgramFiles  Git bin by default  By this way you can access Git Bash with simply typing bash in every terminal including the integrated terminal of Visual Studio Code   How to set the path and environment variables in Windows

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I followed this tutorial from Paul DeCarlo to use the Bash from the Windows Subsystem for Linux  WSL  instead of what comes with Git Bash for Windows  They are the same steps as above in the answer  but use the below in your User Settings instead    terminal integrated shell windows    C   Windows  sysnative  bash exe    This worked for me the first time    which is rare for this stuff

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I had already set up lots of conda environments on WSL  Bash on Ubuntu on Windows   so I wanted to use the same Bash installation on Visual Studio Code   To do that  I just had to specify the path of this particular Bash executable  instead of the Git-Bash  on Visual Studio Code s settings    terminal integrated shell windows    C   Windows  System32  bash exe     PS  to make sure where your Ubuntu on Bash executable is installed on your Windows machine  open the Command prompt  search  cmd  and run   where bash exe

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For scoop users   quot terminal integrated shell windows quot    quot C   Users   YOUR-NAME   scoop  apps  git  current  usr  bin  bash exe quot    quot terminal integrated shellArgs windows quot        quot -l quot      quot -i quot

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I tried the above answers as of vscode 1 42 1 and they worked inasmuch as to get me a git bash terminal  So  bottom line this setting works just for opening a bash shell from terminal    terminal integrated shell windows    C   Program Files  Git  bin  bash exe    However it has the unwanted side effect of also being the shell used to build things and that breaks the MS C   chain because the   character used for path separator is understood by bash as an escape character  The complete fix for me then required me to add this extra variable  setting it to powershell    terminal integrated automationShell windows    C   Windows  System32  WindowsPowerShell  v1 0  powershell exe    Now  I can have my bash terminal and Ctrl-Shift-B or F5 work without problems   Oh  and as other posters mentioned  the source for this information is VSCode s documentation

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What about detached or unrelated shells and code  args  support   While other answers talk about how to configure and use the VScode integrated WSL bash terminal support  they don t solve the problem of  detached shells   shells which were not launched from within VScode  or which somehow get  disconnected  from the VScode server instance associated with the IDE   Such shells can give errors like   Command is only available in WSL or inside a Visual Studio Code terminal   or     Unable to connect to VS Code server  Error in request  Here s a script which makes it easy to solve this problem   I use this daily to connect shells in a tmux session with a specific VScode server instance  or to fix an integrated shell that s become detached from its hosting IDE      bin bash   codesrv-connect      Purpose        Copies the vscode connection environment from one shell to another  so that you can use the       vscode integrated terminal s  code  args   command to communicate with that instance of vscode       from an unrelated shell       Usage       1   Open an integrated terminal in vscode  and run codesrv-connect      2   In the target shell  cd to the same directory and run             codesrv-connect   or follow the instruction printed by codesrv-connect       Setup       Put  codesrv-connect somewhere on your PATH  e g    bin        Cleanup       - Delete abandoned  codesrv-connect files when their vscode sessions die       - Do not add  codesrv-connect files to git repositories       Notes        The VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI environment variable points to a socket which is rather volatile  while the long path for the  code  alias is more stable  vscode doesn t change the latter even across a  code -r    reload   But the former is easily detached and so you need a fresh value if that happens   This is what codesrv-connect does  it captures the value of these two and writes them to  codesrv-connect in the current dir        Verinfo  v1 0 0 - les matheson gmail com - 2020-03-31    function errExit       echo  ERROR       gt  amp 2     exit 1       -S  VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI       errExit  VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI not defined or not a pipe   VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI   if      which code      vscode-server      then     errExit  The  code  command doesn t refer to something under  vscode-server    type -a code   fi cat  lt  lt EOF  gt  codesrv-connect   Temp file created by   which codesrv-connect   source this into your working shell like     codesrv-connect      git hint  add   codesrv-connect  to  gitignore     cd   PWD  if   test -S   VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI   then     echo  ERROR   VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI not a socket  Dead session   else     export VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI   VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI      alias code   which code      echo  Done  the  code  command will talk to socket    VSCODE IPC HOOK CLI   now       echo  You can delete  codesrv-connect when the vscode server context dies  or reuse it in other shells until then   fi EOF  echo    OK  run this to connect to vscode server in a destination shell   echo     PWD  codesrv-connect

User · Answer

You no longer need to type in bash exe path manually  This answer is deprecated  Now you can switch to bash directly  if you have git installed in the default path  If you installed git to a different path you need to use the below solution    Install Git from https   git-scm com download win  Then open Visual Studio Code and open the command palette using Ctrl   Shift   P  Then type  quot open user setting quot   and then select  quot Open User Settings quot  from the drop down menu   Then this tab will open up with default settings on left and your settings on the right   Now copy this line of code to your own settings page  the pane on the right hand side  and save -  quot terminal integrated shell windows quot    quot C   Program Files  Git  bin  bash exe quot  Note   quot C   Program Files Git bin bash exe quot  is the path where the bash exe file is located from the Git installation   If you are using the Windows Subsystem for Linux  WSL  Bash shell  the path would be  quot C  Windows System32 bash exe quot  Now press Ctrl     to open up the terminal from Visual Studio Code  And you will have Bash -

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Updated  Newer versions of Visual Studio Code have the Select Default Shell command in the terminal pull down menu     Remember that it just lists the shells that are in your  PATH  environment variable  For shells that aren t in your path  see other answers   Extra tip  when you start bash it will just execute  bashrc  if you have initialization commands in  bash profile you must copy it to  bashrc  It s essential for using Conda enviroments in Git Bash   Before version 1 36  June 2019   The easiest way now  at least from Visual Studio Code 1 22 on  is to type Shift   Ctrl   P to open the Command Palette and type   Select Default Shell   Now you can easily select your preferred shell between the ones found in your path     For shells that aren t in your  PATH   see the other answers   See the complete Visual Studio Code shell reference  There s lot of meaty stuff

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It depends on whether you have installed Git Bash in the current user only or all users  If it is installed on all users then put  quot terminal integrated shell windows quot    quot C   Program Files  Git  bin  bash exe quot  in your User Settings  Ctrl   Comma   If it is installed on only the current user then put  quot terminal integrated shell windows quot    quot C   Users   lt name of your user gt   AppData  Local  Programs  Git  bin  bash exe quot  in your User Settings  Ctrl   Comma   If the methods listed above do not work then you should try Christer s solution which says -  If you want the integrated environment you need to point to the sh exe file inside the bin folder of your Git installation  So the configuration should say C    lt my-git-install gt   bin  sh exe   Note  The sh exe and bash exe appear completely same to me  There should be no difference between them

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Install Git from https   git-scm com download win Open Visual Studio Code and press and hold Ctrl     to open the terminal    Open the command palette using Ctrl   Shift   P  Type - Select Default Shell Select Git Bash from the options Click on the   icon in the terminal window The new terminal now will be a Git Bash terminal  Give it a few seconds to load Git Bash   You can now toggle between the different terminals as well from the dropdown in terminal

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I happen to be consulting for a Fortune 500 company and it s sadly Windows 7 and no administrator privileges  Thus Node js  Npm  Visual Studio Code  etc   were pushed to my machine - I cannot change a lot  etc     For this computer running Windows 7   Below are my new settings  The one not working is commented out          update channel    none        terminal integrated shell windows    C   Program Files  Git  bin  bash exe         terminal integrated shell windows    C   Windows  sysnative  bash exe

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Latest VS code      if you can t see the settings json  go to menu File -  Preferences -  Settings  or press on Ctrl    Settings appear  see two tabs User  selected by default  and Workspace  Go to User -  Features -  Terminal Terminal section appear  see link edit in settings json  Click and add  terminal integrated shell windows    C   Program Files  Git  bin  bash exe   Save and Restart VS code     Bash terminal will reflect on the terminal

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Press and hold Ctrl     to open the terminal  Inside the terminal  type bash to use Git Bash in the terminal  Note  Make sure you have Git Bash installed on your machine   If you wish to use PowerShell again  just type powershell in the terminal  To use the Windows command line  type cmd in the terminal   The setting you choose will be used as your default

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If you already have  quot bash quot    quot powershell quot  and  quot cmd quot  CLI s and have correct path settings then switching from one CLI to another can done by the following ways   Ctrl       Opens the terminal window with default CLI  bash   enter   Switch from your default current CLI to bash CLI  powershell   enter   Switch from your default current CLI to powershell CLI  cmd   enter   Switch from your default current CLI to cmd CLI   VS Code Version I m using is 1 45 0

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For me this is the only combination worked   quot terminal integrated shell windows quot    quot C   Program Files  Git  git-cmd exe quot    quot terminal integrated shellArgs windows quot        quot --command usr bin bash exe quot      quot -l quot      quot -i quot     With git-bash exe as the    shell windows  every time the bash was opening outside VS   Thank God it worked finally   Else  I was planning to wipe out VS completely and reinstall it  making me to reinstall all my extensions and redo my customizations

User · Answer

Things has been a little bit changed due to the latest updates on Visual Studio Code  The following steps work for me    Press Ctrl   Shift   P to open the Visual Studio Code command palate  Type  gt preferences  Open Settings  JSON  in the text area  Add the following lines at the end of the JSON file which is displayed in your right hand pane    terminal integrated shell windows    C   Program Files  Git  bin  bash exe   Close and reopen your Visual Studio Code instance

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This  at least for me  will make Visual Studio Code open a new Bash window as an external terminal   If you want the integrated environment you need to point to the sh exe file inside the bin folder of your Git installation   So the configuration should say C    lt my-git-install gt   bin  sh exe

[visual-studio-code] How do I use Bash on Windows from the Visual Studio Code integrated terminal?

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