jupyterlab_basic_terminal_extension

Launch a utility terminal in JupyterLab that runs without a shell. Perfect for spawning short-lived console utilities that close their tab automatically when the underlying process exits, instead of leaving behind an idle shell prompt.

Features

• Shell-less terminal command - Adds a JupyterLab command that opens a terminal bound directly to a utility process, with no surrounding shell
• Auto-close on exit - Terminal tab closes as soon as the utility process finishes, keeping the workspace tidy
• Server extension companion - Python jupyter_server extension exposes the route used by the frontend to spawn the process
• JupyterLab 4 native - Built against @jupyterlab/application 4.x and ships as a prebuilt federated extension

Installation

Requires JupyterLab 4.6 or higher, and bash on the server - the terminal initialisation step uses bash-specific syntax, so a sh-only image will not work.

pip install jupyterlab_basic_terminal_extension

Usage

The extension deliberately adds no menu item, palette entry or launcher tile. Its entire surface is one command, invoked programmatically by other extensions, notebook code, or a jupyter_app_launcher tile:

await app.commands.execute('basic-terminal:launch', {
  argv: ['/opt/utils/my-utility.sh'],
  cwd: 'projects/demo'
});

• argv (required) - non-empty array of strings. argv[0] is executed directly; there is no shell, so no globbing, pipes or redirection
• cwd (optional) - absolute path used as-is, or a server-relative path resolved against ServerApp.root_dir ('' is the root). Omit it and the current file browser folder is used, unless the browser is on a registered non-default drive - such a drive is not assumed to map onto the server filesystem, so the server's own working directory is used instead. A path that does not resolve to a directory is rejected with HTTP 400
• shutdownOnClose (optional, default false) - when true, closing the tab this command opened while the program still runs shuts the terminal session down, which ends the program; a tab the lab restores after a page reload does not carry the argument. When false or omitted, the lab's terminal setting Shut down on close decides, as in 1.0.8; its default false leaves the program running on the server after the tab is closed

The command resolves to the terminal widget, and rejects if the process exits before the widget can be displayed.

Uninstall

To remove the extension, execute:

pip uninstall jupyterlab_basic_terminal_extension