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.

Answer 1

You can do this:

`C-u M-x eshell`

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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))

Answer 7

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))))