serial monitor windows closes when recompiling

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

I am on a MacBookPro under lion.
I open Arduion IDE by clicking on an .ino from finder.
Then I compile and upload with [command]u
Open serial monitor window using [shift][command]m
Arduino resets and runs sketch displaying output to serial monitor as expected.
From a terminal window I use vim to change source.
Back to IDE window [command]u closes monitor window, compiles, uploads and runs sketch.
Now I have to reopen the monitor window with [shift][command]m which again resets arduino and runs script.

Is that how it is supposed to work ?
:~

2

That's how it works.

Serial monitor has to close so that avrdude can upload the code.

3

How do I go about requesting an improvement to the IDE ,
an option that automatically opens the serial monitor after the upload is complete?

4

http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/board,21.0.html

Good luck. As you can imagine, you aren't the first person to ask.

5

I would suggest you to get a Mac version of free serial terminal program. Most of them can be kept open (window stays on desktop but serial connection terminated) during program upload. You will have to disconnect before upload and reconnect after upload and the window stays on desktop with the info you last received. I use termite but it is on windows only. You can probably even open a command window and open serial like on unix. I don't know how to though.

6

liudr:
You can probably even open a command window and open serial like on unix. I don't know how to though.

#screen <serial port> 9600

However, the hassle of manually disconnecting / reconnecting an external terminal program (even screen) is far more than just learning the keyboard shortcut to quickly re-open the Serial Monitor.