Terminal on Windows — VS Code and PowerShell

Exact keyboard shortcuts and menu paths to open an integrated terminal in VS Code and the recommended Windows shells

Start Here — VS Code’s integrated terminal (recommended)

  1. Keyboard shortcuts (recommended):
    • Toggle terminal (show/hide): Ctrl + ` (backtick)
    • New terminal instance: Ctrl + Shift + `
    • Command Palette: Ctrl + Shift + P → run View: Toggle Terminal
  2. Menu paths:
    • Terminal → New Terminal
    • View → Terminal
    • Explorer (right-click folder) → Open in Integrated Terminal
  3. Recommended shell: PowerShell (default). It runs gradlew.bat directly using . gradlew.bat.

Quick verification

  1. Open the integrated terminal (shortcut above).
  2. Type and run:

```

Expected: hello printed back.

Windows quick tips

  • Use . gradlew.bat test from the project root in PowerShell or Command Prompt. In Git Bash use ./gradlew test.
  • If gradlew is missing, ask the repo owner to provide wrapper files or run gradle wrapper locally. The course uses Gradle 9.2.0 via the project wrapper.
  • If you see bad interpreter errors in Git Bash, use the Windows wrapper (gradlew.bat) or convert line endings to LF with dos2unix gradlew.

Windows research notes and troubleshooting