Ascinema with asciicast2gif for efficient command line terminal recording

Official website address https://asciinema.org/

For programmers , Sometimes you need to share code operations :

Conventional screen recording software shares pain points ：

1. The video recorded by the screen recording software has a large storage size , And the operation is troublesome , The recording effect is not clear
2. Usually you need to start a larger application , System resources occupy a lot

and asciinema Software Focus on command line terminals Recording effect of , It is a terminal screen recording artifact , This time, I felt that it was too late to meet you .

Let's start with a few pictures of the recording effect on the official website ：

How to operate it asciinema Tools , I won't go over it , You can refer to GitHub Address description .asciinema/asciinema: Terminal session recorder Be familiar with the usage of various command line parameters .

Pain points

although asciinema great , however cast The format of , Writing Markdown When , Not very general . Although the official website provides some playback schemes , But not very friendly after all .

but … Can only choose Gif such , A more general form .

Solution

Fortunately , There are already great gods on the Internet , Provided will be cast This file format , convert to gif Command line tools for .

asciinema/asciicast2gif: Generate GIF animations from asciicasts (asciinema recordings)

Interested students can download and experience .

because asciicast2gif The installation of depends on a lot of npm Warehouse , Personally, the configuration is not particularly smooth , Therefore, a more easy-to-use Docker Installation mode .

Writing scripts to automate

It is hoped that after each terminal command is recorded , Automatic conversion to gif file . Write a script , After recording , Automatic utilization asciicast2gif The tool translates into gif Format .

#!/bin/bash

rec_date_time=$(date +%F_%H-%M-%S)
asciinema rec ${rec_date_time}.cast
# the next line only needed when you install asciicast2gif by docker
alias asciicast2gif='docker run --rm -v $PWD:/data asciinema/asciicast2gif -S 1'
asciicast2gif -S 1 ${rec_date_time}.cast ${rec_date_time}.gif

If you were a fool , It's just ‘~/.bashrc’ In file , Add an alias rec To execute the above bash
Script . such as ：

alias rec='sh /opt/script/auto_rec_asciinema_to_gif.sh'

Final effect

Just input at the terminal rec command , It can realize screen recording and automatic gif Picture conversion capability .

If it helps you , I'll go after you like it ~