Hey Hashnode folks,
This is my post to the #TIL (Today I Learnt) Series.
I have learnt about an interesting tool called Asciinema - if you want to split and read, it is ASCII Cinema. It is a simple, lightweight and awesome utility that records the activities on your terminal and saves it as a less sized text file with a .cast extension.
To Install
You can install this via
apt-get install asciinema
A quick start on this tool.
To Start recording - with the default file name
asciinema rec
Press Enter. The utility will start recording all the activities, - from the commands you enter (every key press - including backspace, delete etc., :)) and the intermediate changes/text if any happening on the screen (in case of installation of tools like @angular/cli) and the final output displayed on the terminal (for the typical unix commands like ls, cat etc., )
Press ctrl+d to stop the recording. The tool tells you the file name and its location. By default it gets saved into /tmp and with a cryptic name with a .cast extension.
To start recording - with your own file name
asciinema rec <yourFileNameWithLocation>
You can give a file name of your choice with the location of course.
The file extension should be .cast as that is a mandatory for the tool to play it further.
To Play the recorded file
asciinema play <fileName>.cast
This command will literally play the commands what you have entered and the outputs that was emitted on the terminal. This is a good refresher to you to look at what was happening to the System and the step by step you had been progressing.
Upload to the Server
If you want, you can upload the recording to the Server by using the upload argument. I have not tried this yet.
Benefits
It would be really useful if you want to do a screen capture for the learning, tutorial series etc.,
I am sure every command line / terminal fanatic, would love this tool for sure, like me :) #HappyLearning...