How to access the terminal in Grass 7.0.4?

Question

Just installed Grass 7.0.4 via " Download GRASS GIS for MS-Windows: Stand Alone Installer (64 bit)".

It's been many many years since I last used Grass, I recall on my old computer there a start menu icon and it would start in terminal/shell/command mode (whatever). With this latest install, there appears to be no option to start grass in command mode? There doesn't appear to be an option to type commands in the GUI, either.

The GUI is handy, if all you want to do is...make a simple map...but I'm trying to run some addons (successfully installed), that can only be run via command. Not an experienced Grass user here. What research I have done on this issue resulted in mind-numbing, pages long, multiple link discussion threads that went way over my head.

All I want to do is access the Grass Command Prompt: How do I enable this feature in Grass 7.0.4 for Windows?

Answer 1

You can start program with -gtext or -text param instead of -gui (included in Start Menu shortcut).

"-gtext" param opens GUI dialog to select working mapset first. When you use -text param you can set mapset directly in command, eg.

"C:\Program Files\GRASS GIS 7.0.4\grass70.bat" -text C:\Location\MAPSET

More info in GRASS manual - GRASS startup program https://grass.osgeo.org/grass73/manuals/grass7.html

Answer 2

Following Bogusław Ciastek's solution, I made a copy of the Start Menu shortcut, open its properties and changed its destination by substituing --gui with --gtext.

Now I have 2 shortcuts: one starts Grass with GUI, the other one without it!

Moreover, I added my C:\Program Files\QGIS 3.10\bin folder to the path env variable, now I can call grass78 (in my case it's 78 given the version I am using) from the PowerShell and work directly from there!