Persist terminal after a shell exits

[m-hilgendorf]

Is it possible to configure a Terminal instance created with createTerminal such that it remains visible after the shell program exits?

For example, say you write a shell like this

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main () {
    char*  line = NULL;
    size_t len = 0;

    for(;;) {
        printf("> ");
        fflush(stdout);
        getline(&line, &len, stdin);
        if (strcmp(line, "exit\n") == 0)
            break;
        // ... shell impl ...
    }

    return 0;
}

The shell will exit if the user types "exit". If you compile and run a shell like this, then write an extension that opens the shell, when a user types "exit" the terminal panel immediately closes.

I'd like the opened terminal to persist with a message like shell exited with code 0 in this case, is there a way to do this with createTerminal?

The use case is allowing users to see the past terminal output in the event of an exit (usually due to a bug in the shell implementation). In the current behavior this isn't possible without extensive workarounds.

[Tyriar]

You can't do this currently. The feature request for this is tracked in microsoft/vscode#70444, give it a 👍 to vote for it