Easy project switching with Itermocil & bash aliases

January 21, 2019

I often need to switch between multiple projects, or maybe I'm just getting started for the day. Spending time booting up these project environments is a waste.

These steps assume you use Mac, iTerm2, and VSCode

Itermocil

First, install Itermocil for pre-configured layouts and commands saved in .yml files.

$ brew update && brew install TomAnthony/brews/itermocil
$ mkdir ~/.itermocil && touch ~/.itermocil/projectname.yml
$ open ~/.itermocil/projectname.yml

Paste in this layout:

windows:
  - name: projectname
    root: /path/to/project
    layout: even-horizontal
    panes:
      - npm run start
      - git status

You can test this by typing itermocil layout in iTerm2.

Command Line Shortcuts

To make this process even faster (9 keystrokes faster), you can create an alias for each of your layouts.

$ echo 'alias projectname = "itermocil projectname"' >>~/.bash_profile
$ source ~/.bash_profile
$ projectname

You could take this a step further by opening VS Code to your project directory as part of the same alias.

Add code to your shell by following these steps (These are Mac instructions, check the link for other platforms):

Open VS Code
Press F1 and search "shell"
Click on Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH

Now update your alias:

alias projectname = "itermocil projectname && code path/to/project/dir"