TermRecord

TermRecord is a simple terminal session recorder with easy-to-share self-contained HTML output!

Installation

sudo pip install TermRecord
TermRecord -o /tmp/session.html

On Mac OS X you will need ttyrec as well:

brew install ttyrec

If you want to run from source and not install:

git clone https://github.com/theonewolf/TermRecord.git
src/TermRecord -o /tmp/test.html -m templates/static.jinja2

replacing /tmp/test.html with whatever you want the output file to be named.

Demos

Here is a selection of demos showing off the capabilities of TermRecord across a variety of shell sessions:

• Using TermRecord
• Hello avplay Video
• Hello Worlds
• Using Figlet
• Using gcc and vim
• Using htop

Why?

How do you share your command line adventures with your friends? For me, the best method was crowding around my monitor so I can show them exactly what I found. But, this isn't scalable or easily recorded for future reference.

How do you explain to someone remotely how to get started programming? You want to show them how to use the tool chain, writing the source code, debugging, etc. For me, the best method would be sharing terminal sessions, or using a screen sharing solution like Google Hangouts. But, that requires real-time interaction and it's hard to reference in the future. You might just want to show someone what you did to help them debug an issue in their code.

How do you remember useful commands and how to use them? Too often I rely on my own brain expecting it to be a sponge for command line knowledge. But, this isn't really scalable and my memory is fallible. Other people write articles and take notes, but it's hard to capture what a tool's inputs and outputs look like, potential failure messages, and proper execution.

Sure, we have screencasts, terminal sharing solutions, screen sharing solutions, and even terminal replay services like showterm. But what we're lacking is a method of archiving our terminal sessions that is cross-platform, replayable, and easily disseminated without needing a web service in the middle. Tools like script and scriptreplay are great, but they aren't cross-platform. Videos would be ideal, except you can't easily copy and paste from them.

Enter TermRecord! TermRecord consumes output from the script command with timing information and can create a self-contained HTML file which replays the recorded session without needing to load anything from the web. These term sessions can be emailed and viewed on practically any device (tested on things like iPads etc.). Basically, the consumer only needs a modern browser.

Usage

Just getting started? The defaults are probably fine for you, just specify an output HTML file and go: TermRecord -o mysession.html. For more complex operations checkout TermRecord --help.

There are three main modes of operation: (1) wrap the script program and dump JSON to stdout, (2) wrap the script program and dump HTML to stdout, (3) parse script log files with timing information saving output (JSON or HTML) to a file or dumping to stdout. The last mode is good for converting any old script sessions to HTML or JSON.

Special Considerations

TermRecord assumes that during a captured session you do not change the terminal's window size. This is usually a safe assumption. However, if you change the terminal's window size to larger dimensions, rendering in the HTML may get messed up. If you resize to smaller dimensions, you should be safe.

We could try and trap window resize events when wrapping script, but it is difficult to merge the timing of that event with the timing information recorded by script. Thus, we punt this difficulty onto you. Don't resize your windows ;-)

Dependencies

TermRecord depends on three things currently:

0. A version of the script command supporting recording of timing information into a file (the -t option on modern Linux distributions) or ttyrec
1. term.js -- minified (YUI), and embedded in the static template; MIT License
2. Google Web Fonts (specifically Ubuntu Mono by default) -- base64 encoded and embedded in the static template; Ubuntu Font License 1.0
3. Jinja2 -- Python templating engine; BSD License

License

TermRecord is licensed under the MIT License. The code must be distributed with that license intact; however, produced HTML files do not need to include the license at all.