Launch ncurses application and cleanup once it exits

Question

I'd like to occasionally use hg split and hg commit --interactive from Emacs, but those commands bring up a GUI. At the moment I either use a separate terminal or ansi-term for those, but would like to do it in more organic way.

Probably the minimal ideal interface would be a function like this:

(defun run-terminal-app cmd args &optional callback)

I have rough ideas how to implement this, e.g.:

1. put a command with args into a temporary shell file
2. launch (ansi-term temp-shell-file some-special-buffer-name)
3. add a term-exec-hook to wait for exit in a some-special-bufer-name, then running a callback, killing a buffer, and removing a hook

But maybe I am just missing something and this is already implemented in some package, or even out of the box?

Answer 1

Something like this?

(defvar run-terminal-app-history nil)
(defun run-terminal-app (command &optional name)
  "Runs COMMAND in a `term' buffer."
  (interactive
   (list (read-from-minibuffer "$ " nil nil nil 'run-terminal-app-history)))
  (let* ((name (or name command))
         (switches (split-string-and-unquote command))
         (command (pop switches))
         (termbuf (apply 'make-term name command nil switches))
         (proc (get-buffer-process termbuf)))
    (set-process-query-on-exit-flag proc nil)
    (set-process-sentinel
     proc (lambda (process signal)
            (and (memq (process-status process) '(exit signal))
                 (buffer-live-p (process-buffer process))
                 (kill-buffer (process-buffer process)))))
    (set-buffer termbuf)
    (term-mode)
    (term-char-mode)
    (switch-to-buffer termbuf)))