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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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 "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe" in your User Settings (Ctrl + Comma).

If it is installed on only the current user then put "terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Users\\<name of your user>\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe" 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:\\<my-git-install>\\bin\\sh.exe.

Note: The sh.exe and bash.exe appear completely same to me. There should be no difference between them.

Answer 3

Things has been a little bit changed due to the latest updates on Visual Studio Code. The following steps work for me.

1. Press Ctrl + Shift + P to open the Visual Studio Code command palate.

2. Type >preferences: Open Settings (JSON) in the text area.

3. 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"
   

4. Close and reopen your Visual Studio Code instance.

Answer 4

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: $@" >&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 <<EOF >.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"

Answer 5

If you already have "bash", "powershell" and "cmd" 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

Answer 6

1. Install Git from https://git-scm.com/download/win

2. Open Visual Studio Code and press and hold Ctrl + ` to open the terminal.

3. Open the command palette using Ctrl + Shift + P.

4. Type - Select Default Shell

5. Select Git Bash from the options

6. Click on the + icon in the terminal window

7. The new terminal now will be a Git Bash terminal. Give it a few seconds to load Git Bash

8. You can now toggle between the different terminals as well from the dropdown in terminal.