14 ms·

Benefits of using tmux – streamlining your development environment

618 points by gkze 10y ago

partycoder 10y ago
iTerm2 has integration with tmux. Much better than the default Terminal shipped with macOS.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  I greatly prefer Terminal.app on OS X, very standards compliant and predictable; if a bit slow but iTerm2 is slow as well.
  - sethhochberg 10y ago
    iTerm's killer feature for me is the special paste modes - it is trivially easy to do things like visually select a block of processes numbers from ps and then paste that block as a space-delimited list on one line to kill them, etc. Terminal.app is fine for most things but can't do stuff like this.
    - mi100hael 10y ago
      ps aux | grep 'thing' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill
      - devereaux 10y ago
        Not the same. An option for block selection (say using alt-click) would be a great addition to a terminal. Someday I get sick of running such long lines I may code that for roxterm.
      - amyjess 10y ago
        My own version of that command: ps -ef | grep 'thing' | awk '{print "kill -9 " $2}' | sh On most of my systems, I tend to make a shell script out of it and usually save it to /usr/local/bin/kll (and I don't care about grepping out grep because it doesn't seem to affect anything).
        partycoder 10y ago
        grrr.... pkill thing killall thing And then there's also pgrep instead of ps | grep
        amyjess 10y ago
        killall and pkill don't work if the thing I'm trying to grep for isn't the first word of the process string. Let's say I'm trying to kill 'python foobar.py' but I don't want to kill 'python bazquux.py'. The only thing it'll respond to with killall is 'killall python', but then both of them will respond. So I have to grep out the parameter and then kill that, with: ps -ef | grep 'foobar.py' | awk '{print "kill -9 " $2}' | sh
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        skovorodkin 10y ago
        Check out -f parameter of pkill.
        amyjess 10y ago
        Ooh... nice! Thanks!
  - kellyjprice 10y ago
    I believe I get less lag in xterm within an Ubuntu VM than with iTerm2.
- erronjason 10y ago
  While it's better than the default terminal, iTerm2's tmux integration has always felt weak contrasted to the advantages of tmux. I've used tmux for the past four years as my main environment, and was totally psyched to hear they were integrating it into iTerm2. But when I began digging into it, little from my workflows translated to the "integration" provided by iTerm2. While it's a great feature of iTerm2, I find myself just using regular old tmux instead. What features of the tmux integration do you utilize in iTerm2? And for sitting through this, here's how to remap the default tmux hotkey: https://github.com/erronjason/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L16-L21 https://github.com/erronjason/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.con...
  - CJefferson 10y ago
    I mainly like it because scrollback works in the GUI.
    - pfranz 10y ago
      That's one frustration I have with Tmux. I want mouse scrollback, but don't want the other mouse controls. If I remember correctly I would accidentally go into copy-mode when I click-dragged my mouse by accident.
      - erronjason 10y ago
        That's the largest gripe I've had. Eventually, I got used to not relying on GUI scrollback - that actually sped things up for me. In a pinch I just `hotkey, [` to activate scroll, then just use my mouse or page-up & page-down. Even if you don't use tmux, get used to piping anything you'd want to read through `less`. It'll speed your workflow up.
        CJefferson 10y ago
        I do use less sometimes, but sometimes I want to double check a command I typed a shirt while ago, or a command ends up outputting slightly more than I expected. What I really want us an intelligent terminal, which attaches programming output to the program which produced it, let's me fold up long outputs, easily escape a long running program and store it output in a buffer for later checking, etc. But that seems annoyingly impossible.
Cieplak 10y ago
tmux git:(master) cloc . 189 text files. 184 unique files. 21 files ignored. github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70 T=0.61 s (276.7 files/s, 83432.2 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 154 6714 5295 33234 C/C++ Header 8 528 543 3236 m4 1 56 0 612 awk 1 7 23 340 make 1 13 15 245 Perl 1 9 12 42 Bourne Shell 2 5 0 24 YAML 1 0 0 10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 169 7332 5888 37743 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- screen git:(master) cloc . 131 text files. 120 unique files. 39 files ignored. github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70 T=0.42 s (221.1 files/s, 90285.5 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 42 2645 3053 28039 C/C++ Header 38 437 809 1970 Bourne Shell 9 97 100 465 m4 1 42 21 142 Perl 2 10 5 96 zsh 1 4 8 41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 93 3235 3996 30753 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- jaymzcampbell 10y ago
  I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what on earth is the point being made here?
nextos 10y ago
Does anyone run tmux with a tiling window manager for local development? If so, what are the advantages? I know automating sessions is one of them, as explained in the article. I am more interested in hearing about interactions with the terminal. You already get good mouse-less window management with something like i3 or xmonad. How about copy & paste? I use urxvt plugin for this, but I often find myself using the mouse to select and middle-click. Is tmux better?
- ianleeclark 10y ago
  I run i3 and tmux. The biggest reason I do this is that I'm much more used to tmux key bindings rather than i3. Moreover, I don't think I'd get any huge benefits by getting more used to i3 key bindings. Edit for another reason: I use Tmux on my work laptop (OSX) and on my Desktop (FreeBSD + i3), so my key bindings are supported on essentially whatever machine I'm on.
- nilkn 10y ago
  I do. Part of it is just that I'm so used to it from using it remotely that I feel at home using it locally as well. But it's also very portable. For instance, I can use it in macOS or even on Windows using the Ubuntu bash subsystem. This makes it effectively a universal tiled window manager for me.
- devereaux 10y ago
  I do that, not in a real "tiling window manager" but something very close: openbox, set to show no titlebars, and using shortcuts to title the windows to precise positions. I have 3 position: most of my screen on the left, a small vertical slice on the right, a smaller chunk underneath. If I want a titlebar for some application, I have a shortcut that will give the window a titlebar, and then I can move it around with the mouse if I want to. So I get the best of both worlds. Surprise - I don't run tmux. It is simpler to have several roxterm, in these position, with various tabs open. When I work remotely, I use screen on the remote host, but that's all. To give you an idea of my shortcuts, in a real life scenario ; my caps lock is remapped to control or escape with xcape: - esc: pop a new roxterm and from wherever I am, bring me to the terminal desktop - f9: resize this roxterm to the left part of the screen - esc: pop another roxterm, focus it - ctrl-f9: resize it to the right vertical slice of the screen - f4: switch to the browser desktop - f12: put by browser in full screen, to check some reference without distraction - f5: switch back to the terminals desktop - alt-tab: switch to the roxterm that's currently on the right - f12: make this roxterm full screen to do something without distraction for a while - f12: demaximize and put back this roxterm where it was - f9: now move this roxterm to the left, over the other one - alt-tab: move to the other roxterm that was on the left - ctrl-f9: put this roxterm in the vertical slice position on the right - ctrl-space: make this roxterm sticky, showing on all desktop - f4: move back to the internet desktop to check more documentation - f9: resize the browser to be on the left part of the screen, so that I can see both the browser and the roxterm - f5: move back to the terminal desktop. The space occupied by the browser will be replaced by the roxterm I left there, on the left - alt-tab: move focus to this roxterm - ctrl-t: open a new tab in this roxterm - ctrl-v : paste some stuff from the internet browser (etc..) I have accomplished all that with about 20 keystrokes, from muscle memory. When I connect my extra wide screen, f10 and f11 have similar windows resizing function as f9 do on the laptop screen. f1 to f8 take me to desktop dedicated to some use or another (f7 is the windows desktop, with visual studio, f6 is the rstudio desktop, etc) One think I positively hated until recently: copy and paste. Muscle memory means ctrl-shift-c in one application and ctrl-c in another didn't work. So in the terminal, I remapped the sigint signals to ctrl-x with stty. Hitting ctrl-x is just as convenient as ctrl-c and now I can copy paste as needed. ctrl-v to enter verbatim sequences is done with ctrl-q, just like in vim. so ctrl-c and ctrl-v work everywhere. When I catch myself wanting to use the x copy paste buffer, the middle click is not so hard: on a thinkpad keyboard, it is right below the space key. But I just prefer ctrl-v. The luxury of having 2 independant copy-paste buffers is appreciable for some tasks however :) Anyway, sorry for the long reply. I just don't have a lot of opportunities to talk about my setup. I am some kind of an optimization freak, I know it. But I don't want an interface to bother me. I have been using that for the last 3 or 4 years after giving up on OSX, and it has one great quality: I don't have to think about it. It just work the way I want. YMMV of course.
jerguismi 10y ago
The one reason why I would prefer tmux over screen is that it is possible to script it. AFAIK screen is much more difficult to script.
- ngoldbaum 10y ago
  Screen has awful support for unicode. When people started using emoji a lot on IRC i swtiched so irssi would stop moji-baking.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gaur 10y ago
Looks like a nice .tmux.conf. Wonder if it's online anywhere.
- Artemis2 10y ago
  From the author's GitHub repository: https://github.com/keeganlow/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf https://github.com/keeganlow/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf
  - orbitingpluto 10y ago
    Long time tmux user. Thanks for posting the .tmux.conf link. Modified the window decorator line as sometimes you can't always tell which pane you are in: set-option -g set-titles-string '#(whoami)@#H session: #S window: #I-#W pane: #P' Also noticed that the status right only updates the time if you perform a tmux op.
minhajuddin 10y ago
I use a tool called tummy (https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy full disclosure: built by me) which allows me to create a Tmuxfile per project. A typical file looks like this: session "liveform" directory "/home/minhajuddin/r/liveform/frontend" window "src", [ pane("vim TODO"), ] window "server-pry", [ pane("puma --port 3000 --config <(echo '')"), pane("rails c", :horizontal), ] window "play", [ pane("git status"), ] window "misc", [ pane("sidekiq"), #pane("httpdebug", :horizontal), pane("cd ~/s/html; fs", :horizontal), pane("guard", :horizontal), ] # vim: filetype=ruby
- dxhdr 10y ago
  Your github seems to be missing the code! require "tummy/version" module Tummy # Your code goes here... end
  - minhajuddin 10y ago
    All of the code is actually in a executable script https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy/blob/master/exe/tummy https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy/blob/master/exe/tummy I am a bit biased, but it has been working very nicely for me. It also has ability to pass raw tmux arguments for things which aren't supported by it.
- positr0n 10y ago
  I used to use tools like that (tummy, teamocil, etc) but I've since discovered tmux-resurrect. It persists tmux sessions, windows, panes, and a whitelist of non-destructive commands like vim and top across reboots. Now my tmux sessions just organically grow and shrink as necessary and I never worry about having to recreate them. Of course I can see the case for combining both tools. If you have a lot of projects, and/or want REPLs loaded you might not want them sitting around in memory for months if you're not going to use them. It is trivial to get working. Just use tmux plugin manager to install tmux-resurrect and tmux-continuum. https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm Example usage in my dotfiles: https://github.com/positron/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L72-L99 https://github.com/positron/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#...
mcescalante 10y ago
I've been using tmux heavily in my local development workflow for the last 6 months or so, and it absolutely pays off to have three window tiles in a single terminal window at a bare minimum. I am also using teamocil to manage windows and panes in tmux, although it's not needed at all: https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil When I set up initially on OSX, the conf took me a few to get right so that I have some mousing abilities and reasonable vim support. Here is a copy of my (simple) tmux.conf file: https://gist.github.com/mcescalante/004e649d8484574ce9d296ad69a80a08 https://gist.github.com/mcescalante/004e649d8484574ce9d296ad...
- joshuakarjala 10y ago
  How do you get into VI copy mode?
  - mcescalante 10y ago
    Either (v) for visual and the arrow keys, or (V) to select entire current line, then (y) to yank. (yy) will also yank lines without entering visual mode, which I use a lot. If you're asking how I copy in general from stdout with the cursor, I select the text (selection appears yellow) and press Enter and it copies to the clipboard :)
joatmon-snoo 10y ago
When I was first introduced to tmux, I was really excited by having a terminal session I could reattach to. I was never able to get very deep into it though: (1) a lot of the time a single script would get me up to speed, (2) the extra layer of abstraction broke some stuff I was doing, and (3) I couldn't make heads or tails of a lot of the tmux documentation. I'll definitely take a second look at a lot of the things people are posting here, but in the meantime, is there somewhere I can actually learn how to use tmux properly?
- clarry 10y ago
  I think you should give the man page & built in documentation another chance. It's not that long (maybe 40-50 pages printed) and you can skip a few sections that you'll know to look up if you need them. You can also skip the detailed descriptions of most commands and options. Just having the important shortcuts memorized and having a general idea of what commands you have and what they do is all you need. Don't forget to read the examples.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- estreeper 10y ago
  Half a dozen commands will get you 90% of the way there. After you've run tmux: ctrl+b followed by... % - split pane vertically " - split pane horizontally arrow keys - change pane you're typing in :new-window 2 - switch to window 2 x - kill pane d - detach Command line arguments: tmux list-sessions tmux attach #will attach to last session by default tmux attach -t0 #will attach to session 0
  - mickael-kerjean 10y ago
    A nice and convenient shortcut for: tmux list-sessions tmux ls
- dguaraglia 10y ago
  I've found that adding a simple configuration makes tmux a) nicer to look at b) somewhat more intuitive (the default colors made the screen confusing to me.) This is my current configuration: https://gist.github.com/dguaraglia/f15f39f339545041845612a5bb1fbc01 https://gist.github.com/dguaraglia/f15f39f339545041845612a5b... With that and using tmuxp to manage a context for each of my projects, I can quickly "launch" a project and have a window with an editing pane, a pane to run tests and a pane to run deployment commands/anything else, all of the panes are already using the correct Python virtualenv, etc. This is a pretty comprehensive cheatsheet: https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058 https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058
godmodus 10y ago
screen master race reporting it! that said, i do mix screen on the local machine and tmux on the remote machine. lazy, but does the trick. of course one can script either to do everything one needs.
beefsack 10y ago
I started writing a terminal multiplexer in Rust, partially because I wanted to fix clearing ANSI escape codes to EOL, but also because I wanted to try and come up with a multiplexer that had very similar shortcuts and commands to Vim.
- nicwest 10y ago
  How did it go?
- Lio 10y ago
  That sounds like an interesting project. Another approach might be to use NeoVim which now has a built in terminal emulator. [1] [1]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/nvim_terminal_emulator.html https://neovim.io/doc/user/nvim_terminal_emulator.html
edem 10y ago
I've never heard of tmux. Where should I look? Little hint?
- petepete 10y ago
  https://danielmiessler.com/study/tmux/ https://danielmiessler.com/study/tmux/
- derwiki 10y ago
  ... first Google hit? https://tmux.github.io/ https://tmux.github.io/
  - edem 10y ago
    You misunderstood the question. I'm more interested in how a terminal multiplexer is good for me.
draw_down 10y ago
I prefer opening tabs in my terminal window instead of this or other similar tools. It's not an exact replacement but I try to avoid learning and remembering new sets of keystrokes, and there are some other small UI wins in my opinion.
- Vekz 10y ago
  I agree with you. I like that I can rip off terminal tabs and move them around. Also move them to different virtual desktops. I tend to have a virtual desktop for each project I work on keeping things spatially separate that way. One piece of functionality missing form this setup is the "pre configured scripted dev environments" but i've used this tool https://github.com/achiu/consular https://github.com/achiu/consular to achieve that behavior
_vya7 10y ago
This is actually why I prefer Emacs. I can literally do all my development work in Emacs, with a full-featured shell (e-shell), directory explorer (dir-ed), REPL and full IDE for Clojure (CIDER). It's pretty great.
- taeric 10y ago
  TRAMP really has changed the way I look at managing remote machines. Learning to set the remote path somewhat sanely has almost completely eliminated my usage of regular terminals. I do wish it was a little better on latency sometimes. But overall this environment is ridiculously nice.
- adamrt 10y ago
  Shameless plug for https://github.com/adamrt/sane-term https://github.com/adamrt/sane-term I use it (and created it) so I could use ansi-term instead of e-shell. Then C-c C-j lets you treat the term like a normal buffer (move, yank, etc), and C-c C-k when you are done lets you switch back to normal term style buffer.
- elwell 10y ago
  > a full-featured shell (e-shell) My experience wasn't so simple. Griefs: coloring, git support problems, bash aliases. I'm sure there's a way to get it to work, but I wouldn't call it a full featured shell out-of-the-box; at least, it doesn't really compare with Terminal.
  - sdegutis 10y ago
    For git I use Magit, I don't have any bash aliases, and anything I would normally see coloring in when using bash in a real terminal has a full-fledged Emacs analog.
- wry_discontent 10y ago
  I've found that emacs mostly eliminates the need for a shell. Most of what I was doing can be handled by Magit, Dired, and Async shell commands. The only thing I really use the shell for these days in long running npm jobs.
simosx 10y ago
I use Byobu (http://byobu.co/ http://byobu.co/), which is a configuration layer over tmux. It's tmux with nicely packaged features.
- dleslie 10y ago
  As a screen user, Byobu is the best alternative. When I muscle-memoried screen commands the first time Byobu detected my actions and asked if my configuration ought to be changed to use screen bindings. Now that is UX done right.
  - hughw 10y ago
    Yes -- same for ctrl-a, its normal escape sequence. It detects emacs users typing ctrl-a and invites you to map it the way you want.
patrickdavey 10y ago
If you use tmux and vim, and if you run tests, then you must look at janko-m/vim-test and vim-dispatch. Runs any test seamlessly in the background. Vim-dispatch also has the best intro video to anything ever ;) https://vimeo.com/63116209 https://vimeo.com/63116209
- rcarmo 10y ago
  Tim Pope is awesome. I was just staring and grinning at the end. :)
- flukus 10y ago
  Is vim dispatch still necessary now that there is native background processes?
  - patrickdavey 10y ago
    Good question, I assume not, but the plugins work so.... I guess maybe the incredible and prolific Tim Pope well maybe update vim dispatch to work with the background processes.
- anonymousDan 10y ago
  Video is awesome. What is the advantage over just having a separate tmux/screen session in which you launch your command though?
  - patrickdavey 10y ago
    Well, the nice thing here is that with the integration between vim-test and vim-dispatch is that you don't have to do anything for having the tests run in a separate session. It just works. I mean really you _are_ just having it run in a separate session, just more smoothly. If the tests pass then the tmux window the tests were run in will just disappear, if not, you get popped back to the quickfix window with the errors listed. Give it a go and see how you like it! :)
Touche 10y ago
To me tmux, like a lot of tools, suffers from bad defaults that makes it less enjoyable to use. One example is not being able to scroll with a mouse. I usually find someone's tmux.conf online and use it, but always run into strange problems that I don't have the energy figuring out. My current conf suffers from the navigation bar going completely black when I try to rename a pane (can't see what i'm typing). Really wish more tools took care into making solid defaults and not assuming all users are like the ones on their mailing lists.
- rhinoceraptor 10y ago
  That's just how (most) command line tools are. You have to invest some time to configure them. And hopefully you're not the type who will fiddle with the settings too much once you have stuff working. I use GNU stow to install my ZSH, tmux, vim, etc. settings on new computers and it works well for me.
- shriek 10y ago
  Won't be able to answer all your questions but to enable your mouse scroll add the following to your .tmux.conf set -g mouse on Likewise, to select from mouse you probably need to press "Shift" in Linux or "Fn" in Mac. I've had more issues with Mac than in Linux with tmux tbh.
  - Touche 10y ago
    I didn't ask a question, I know how to fix the issues.
    - syaz1 10y ago
      Is your reply really necessary? It doesn't contribute anything. At least other people having the same issues which you know the solutions but don't share, can benefit. Sorry, it just came out wrong to me.
      - Touche 10y ago
mrbill 10y ago
I've used screen for darn near 20 years now. Have tried to switch to tmux, but even with screen-like keybindings, I end up running into something[0] that makes me switch back because screen is just muscle memory for me at this point. [0] like switching to a non-existent-numbered screen to get a list of which ones I do have...
- Graziano_M 10y ago
  The zoom feature alone should be enough to say goodbye to screen.
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  I was the same way when I first started using tmux. I just "fixed" the keybindings in tmux to what I was used to and went about my business. It is slightly inconvenient the first time I fire up tmux (with the defaults) on a new host. I just take a 30 second break, create my customized ~/.tmux.conf, and continue on like nothing happened.
rcarmo 10y ago
Hmmm. I had no idea there was powerline for tmux (I used powerline a couple of times in vim, then lost patience with it because sometimes I'd lose the wedges for some reason. It was early days then).
st3v3r 10y ago
It's definitely a cool tool if most of your development uses the command line. As a mobile developer, however, most of my development is spent in IDEs. Alas, that means my use of tmux is limited.
hendry 10y ago
As developers we need a super simple way to log a session. Unfortunately that's non-trivial in tmux. https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/629#issuecomment-258415386 https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/629#issuecomment-2584153...
AceJohnny2 10y ago
"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" David J. Wheeler Tmux/Screen provides an extra redirectable abstraction layer over the terminal device. The biggest complaint I regularly see about it is that people are used to the screen keybindings. I wonder why not add an abstraction layer there, where keypresses really call commands that perform the actions, and you could reconfigure these. This is how Emacs has done it for 30 years...
- snerbles 10y ago
  > The biggest complaint I regularly see about it is that people are used to the screen keybindings. That's my problem with Tmux. Ctrl-a,d is already burned into muscle memory, and for my applications Screen is "good enough".
  - jitl 10y ago
    Tmux expects you to rebind its leader to Ctrl-a once you're ready to move off of screen. Otherwise, it's default works nicely if you are nesting screen inside of Tmux or vis-versa
    - AceJohnny2 10y ago
      I use Ctrl-a as the "go back to beginning of line" shortcut that Readline-capable programs offer by default [1]. That's actually one reason I never got used to Screen ;) [1] that is, using the Emacs keybindings it exposes by default. I know you can change that through .inputrc
      - jyriand 10y ago
        I'm using Ctrl-a on tmux, and to get back to beginning on line I just have to press it twice Ctrl-a Ctrl-a.
  - alaaibrahim 10y ago
    in your .tmux.conf set -g prefix C-a unbind C-b bind C-a send-prefix
mambodog 10y ago
If you want to get a taste of the benefits of tmux without having to learn anything new, I recommend using iTerm and setting up an alias for 'ssh [your server] -t "tmux -CC attach || tmux -CC"' Just running that command will connect to your server and attach to an existing tmux session, or create a new one if needed, and make use of iTerm's tmux integration, so you can use the standard macOS keyboard commands (or the UI) to do things like switch tabs, make new tabs, close them, make new windows, etc. all using tmux and a single ssh connection. You can press 'esc' in the command window to detach from your session and when you return (just using that alias) all your work is just as you left it.
- fulafel 10y ago
  Are there terminal emulators on other platforms that offer similar tmux integration?
  - xemdetia 10y ago
    'tmux' is actually something that runs server-side if you are ssh'ing into something, it should work with any terminal emulator the same way as GNU screen would if you ever used that, e.g. PuTTY works fine for tmux.
    - michaelmior 10y ago
      I believe the parent was referring to iTerm's native understanding of tmux windows which is certainly not supported in all terminal emulators.
- fredsir 10y ago
  I never knew about this. Thanks! When I do this, it opens a new window with the "attached tmux running inside" and the old window is running in "tmux mode". Is it possible to not have a new window open, but use the window where the command is run instead?
- blfr 10y ago
  Use mosh[1] instead of ssh for superior handling of weaker connections and roaming. You close your laptop one place, go elsewhere, switch to LTE, whatever, open the lid and you're back on. Don't even need to reconnect. [1] https://mosh.org/ https://mosh.org/
mmanfrin 10y ago
Does anyone know the color scheme used in the examples? It is very nice.
du_bing 10y ago
I recommend the book: Tmux--Productive Mouse-Free Developmenet, written by Brian P. Hogan. It's a concise and practical book about Tmux. There are some usable configuration in it, and you can learn something about concepts like session, window, pane in the book. After you combine vim style with tmux, it's quite perfect to do anything in the terminal. Haha, enjoy!
hhsnopek 10y ago
I dropped tmux for neovim terminal emulator with neovim-remote to hook into my existing nvim session. So far so go!
- cyphar 10y ago
  How do you deal with :terminal replacing your current buffer (it close it when you exit the shell). And the fact that as far as I can tell none of your keybindings work when you're inside :terminal?
  - hhsnopek 10y ago
    Here's my terminal mappings: https://github.com/hhsnopek/dotfiles/blob/master/.nvimrc#L93 https://github.com/hhsnopek/dotfiles/blob/master/.nvimrc#L93 Otherwise I use neovim-remote (https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote), which will soon be natively in neovim, but until then you can connect to your vim instance and either create a new buffer or replace the existing one. You perform your things and then use `:w | bp` and jump back a buffer if you created a new one. Similarly my keybindings can be mapped just as I did in my dotfiles (first link). Probably my favorite part is being able to search my terminal instance in vim style with `/` and navigate as I would in any other file
mark_l_watson 10y ago
I do a lot of work in ssh shells, and somehow years ago I got out of the habit of using screen or tmux. I just took 20 minutes to go through the tutorial linked in this article. With a pane open as a shell and another pane opened with emacs+intero almost immediately it felt better than using different ssh shells, which is what I usually do. The control-b prefix character use never interfered with any of my activities.
baby 10y ago
I use Tmux resurrect[1] with Tmux continuum[2] so that after rebooting my laptop, my tmux session is restored. [1]: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect [2]: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum
- garou 10y ago
  If you use ViM, vim-obsession[1] work with tmux-ressurect[2] to restore vim -S [1]: https://github.com/tpope/vim-obsession https://github.com/tpope/vim-obsession [2]: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect/blob/master/docs/restoring_vim_and_neovim_sessions.md https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect/blob/master/d...
susam 10y ago
One of the first things I had to with tmux is figure out a convenient prefix key. I found the default prefix key (C-b) to be a little clumsy to use. After a little experimentation, C-j has become my secondary tmux prefix key of choice. It doesn't interfere with my shell or Vim usage. C-j is redundant in shell as well as Vim because it does what pressing the Enter key would do. Further, in Vim, C-j is synonymous to j in normal and visual modes. C-j is also very easy to type because my right forefinger always returns to j while resting. This is what my ~/.tmux.conf looks like. # Set C-j as secondary prefix key. # C-b remains intact as primary prefix key. set -g prefix2 C-j bind-key C-j send-prefix -2 # Eliminate delay after <Esc> key press in Vim. set -g escape-time 0 # Let Vim use 256 colors. set -g default-terminal screen-256color
- ams6110 10y ago
  I use C-], but basically pick anything that isn't a common bash or emacs cursor movement. I can't use C-b as that is my "backspace"
- spinningarrow 10y ago
  I ended up using C-s. Unfortunately C-j is taken over by vim-tmux-navigator (which I don't mind at all).
jlebrech 10y ago
linux/unix as an IDE has it's merits. are there any specific distros that focus on setting up an environment?
johncoltrane 10y ago
Benefits of using tmux if you don't need it: none.
gitaarik 10y ago
I came from screen when I started using tmux. I spend quite some time to make the key bindings similar to screen, however, kept some things the tmux way because it was better. For people interested, this is my complete tmux.conf: https://github.com/gitaarik/tmuxconf/blob/master/.tmux.conf https://github.com/gitaarik/tmuxconf/blob/master/.tmux.conf
ghshephard 10y ago
The one issue I have with tmux, versus using iterm natively, is that every single time I have to reboot my machine for an operating system upgrade, I lose all the terminal history of my tmux sessions - whereas with iterm, when the machine restarts, it restarts with the all the windows and terminal histories intact. Its ironic that tmux doesn't provide any mechanism to save your terminal history between reboots. Tools like tmuxinator/tmux-resurrect will save your session/window/pane configs, but you lose all your history... If I could just recover my (typically very valuable) terminal history between reboots, tmux would be the perfect tool for managing my terminal environments...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- igg 10y ago
  tmux-resurrect seems to have an option to save bash history. When combined with tmux-continuum, it should happen seamlessly.
  - ghshephard 10y ago
    The history I'm referring to is the scrollback buffer. The work that I do, which is predominantly interactive in a REPL like environment with remote devices, has a rich history of information in each window/pane. I dread losing those scrollback buffers every time I have to restart tmux.
chriswarbo 10y ago
I'll give a shout-out to DVTM ( http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm ) which I've been using successfully for a couple of years. Prior to that I used tmux for a few years, and screen before that. I suppose the only compelling reason to use DVTM is that it acts like a tiling WM, so if you use one (I use XMonad http://xmonad.org http://xmonad.org ) the experience is basically the same (mod-h/mod-l to resize, mod-j/mod-k to navigate windows, mod-space to switch layout, etc.). The main reason I switched is my preference to avoid bloat. DVTM doesn't do everything tmux and screen do, it only does window management. I use dtach ( http://dtach.sourceforge.net http://dtach.sourceforge.net ) for persistence. I previously used abduco ( http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco ), but it segfaulted on me a couple of times (months apart, in a non-reproducible way); haven't tried it for about a year, so it might have stabilised. I use st ( http://st.suckless.org http://st.suckless.org ) as my terminal, again to avoid bloat.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cm3 10y ago
  I cannot use st because it still has corner cases that xterm works well but st doesn't yet, and I find the need to patch the sources hard to maintain when a new release comes out and has refactorings included. But I must say that st's font rendering of Unicode is more complete than rxvt-unicode or xterm. With the same font configured in all three, st is the one that manages to render the most glyphs of plan9port's unicode sample file. Would be great to have the same in urxvt or xterm.
hansjorg 10y ago
As an unsophisticated screen user without any interest in what seems to be a turf war, what is the deal with the never ending stream of "Use tmux!" articles on here?
Samathy 10y ago
I've been a GNU Screen user for a good while. The increased productivity is wonderful. However, I'm prevented from switching to Tmux because you can't attach to the same session from multiple terminals, and show a different window in each terminal. I use this all the time in Screen - in Tmux, changing the window being viewed in one terminal, changes all other terminals attached to that session.

618 points by gkze 10y ago

partycoder 10y ago

iTerm2 has integration with tmux. Much better than the default Terminal shipped with macOS.

microcolonel 10y ago
I greatly prefer Terminal.app on OS X, very standards compliant and predictable; if a bit slow but iTerm2 is slow as well.
- sethhochberg 10y ago
  iTerm's killer feature for me is the special paste modes - it is trivially easy to do things like visually select a block of processes numbers from ps and then paste that block as a space-delimited list on one line to kill them, etc. Terminal.app is fine for most things but can't do stuff like this.
  - mi100hael 10y ago
    ps aux | grep 'thing' | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill
    - devereaux 10y ago
      Not the same. An option for block selection (say using alt-click) would be a great addition to a terminal. Someday I get sick of running such long lines I may code that for roxterm.
    - amyjess 10y ago
      My own version of that command: ps -ef | grep 'thing' | awk '{print "kill -9 " $2}' | sh On most of my systems, I tend to make a shell script out of it and usually save it to /usr/local/bin/kll (and I don't care about grepping out grep because it doesn't seem to affect anything).
      - partycoder 10y ago
        grrr.... pkill thing killall thing And then there's also pgrep instead of ps | grep
        amyjess 10y ago
        killall and pkill don't work if the thing I'm trying to grep for isn't the first word of the process string. Let's say I'm trying to kill 'python foobar.py' but I don't want to kill 'python bazquux.py'. The only thing it'll respond to with killall is 'killall python', but then both of them will respond. So I have to grep out the parameter and then kill that, with: ps -ef | grep 'foobar.py' | awk '{print "kill -9 " $2}' | sh
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        skovorodkin 10y ago
        Check out -f parameter of pkill.
        amyjess 10y ago
        Ooh... nice! Thanks!
- kellyjprice 10y ago
  I believe I get less lag in xterm within an Ubuntu VM than with iTerm2.
erronjason 10y ago
While it's better than the default terminal, iTerm2's tmux integration has always felt weak contrasted to the advantages of tmux. I've used tmux for the past four years as my main environment, and was totally psyched to hear they were integrating it into iTerm2. But when I began digging into it, little from my workflows translated to the "integration" provided by iTerm2. While it's a great feature of iTerm2, I find myself just using regular old tmux instead. What features of the tmux integration do you utilize in iTerm2? And for sitting through this, here's how to remap the default tmux hotkey: https://github.com/erronjason/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L16-L21 https://github.com/erronjason/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.con...
- CJefferson 10y ago
  I mainly like it because scrollback works in the GUI.
  - pfranz 10y ago
    That's one frustration I have with Tmux. I want mouse scrollback, but don't want the other mouse controls. If I remember correctly I would accidentally go into copy-mode when I click-dragged my mouse by accident.
    - erronjason 10y ago
      That's the largest gripe I've had. Eventually, I got used to not relying on GUI scrollback - that actually sped things up for me. In a pinch I just `hotkey, [` to activate scroll, then just use my mouse or page-up & page-down. Even if you don't use tmux, get used to piping anything you'd want to read through `less`. It'll speed your workflow up.
      - CJefferson 10y ago
        I do use less sometimes, but sometimes I want to double check a command I typed a shirt while ago, or a command ends up outputting slightly more than I expected. What I really want us an intelligent terminal, which attaches programming output to the program which produced it, let's me fold up long outputs, easily escape a long running program and store it output in a buffer for later checking, etc. But that seems annoyingly impossible.

Cieplak 10y ago

tmux git:(master) cloc . 189 text files. 184 unique files. 21 files ignored. github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70 T=0.61 s (276.7 files/s, 83432.2 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 154 6714 5295 33234 C/C++ Header 8 528 543 3236 m4 1 56 0 612 awk 1 7 23 340 make 1 13 15 245 Perl 1 9 12 42 Bourne Shell 2 5 0 24 YAML 1 0 0 10 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 169 7332 5888 37743 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- screen git:(master) cloc . 131 text files. 120 unique files. 39 files ignored. github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70 T=0.42 s (221.1 files/s, 90285.5 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 42 2645 3053 28039 C/C++ Header 38 437 809 1970 Bourne Shell 9 97 100 465 m4 1 42 21 142 Perl 2 10 5 96 zsh 1 4 8 41 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 93 3235 3996 30753 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

jaymzcampbell 10y ago
I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but what on earth is the point being made here?

nextos 10y ago

Does anyone run tmux with a tiling window manager for local development? If so, what are the advantages? I know automating sessions is one of them, as explained in the article. I am more interested in hearing about interactions with the terminal. You already get good mouse-less window management with something like i3 or xmonad. How about copy & paste? I use urxvt plugin for this, but I often find myself using the mouse to select and middle-click. Is tmux better?

ianleeclark 10y ago
I run i3 and tmux. The biggest reason I do this is that I'm much more used to tmux key bindings rather than i3. Moreover, I don't think I'd get any huge benefits by getting more used to i3 key bindings. Edit for another reason: I use Tmux on my work laptop (OSX) and on my Desktop (FreeBSD + i3), so my key bindings are supported on essentially whatever machine I'm on.
nilkn 10y ago
I do. Part of it is just that I'm so used to it from using it remotely that I feel at home using it locally as well. But it's also very portable. For instance, I can use it in macOS or even on Windows using the Ubuntu bash subsystem. This makes it effectively a universal tiled window manager for me.
devereaux 10y ago
I do that, not in a real "tiling window manager" but something very close: openbox, set to show no titlebars, and using shortcuts to title the windows to precise positions. I have 3 position: most of my screen on the left, a small vertical slice on the right, a smaller chunk underneath. If I want a titlebar for some application, I have a shortcut that will give the window a titlebar, and then I can move it around with the mouse if I want to. So I get the best of both worlds. Surprise - I don't run tmux. It is simpler to have several roxterm, in these position, with various tabs open. When I work remotely, I use screen on the remote host, but that's all. To give you an idea of my shortcuts, in a real life scenario ; my caps lock is remapped to control or escape with xcape: - esc: pop a new roxterm and from wherever I am, bring me to the terminal desktop - f9: resize this roxterm to the left part of the screen - esc: pop another roxterm, focus it - ctrl-f9: resize it to the right vertical slice of the screen - f4: switch to the browser desktop - f12: put by browser in full screen, to check some reference without distraction - f5: switch back to the terminals desktop - alt-tab: switch to the roxterm that's currently on the right - f12: make this roxterm full screen to do something without distraction for a while - f12: demaximize and put back this roxterm where it was - f9: now move this roxterm to the left, over the other one - alt-tab: move to the other roxterm that was on the left - ctrl-f9: put this roxterm in the vertical slice position on the right - ctrl-space: make this roxterm sticky, showing on all desktop - f4: move back to the internet desktop to check more documentation - f9: resize the browser to be on the left part of the screen, so that I can see both the browser and the roxterm - f5: move back to the terminal desktop. The space occupied by the browser will be replaced by the roxterm I left there, on the left - alt-tab: move focus to this roxterm - ctrl-t: open a new tab in this roxterm - ctrl-v : paste some stuff from the internet browser (etc..) I have accomplished all that with about 20 keystrokes, from muscle memory. When I connect my extra wide screen, f10 and f11 have similar windows resizing function as f9 do on the laptop screen. f1 to f8 take me to desktop dedicated to some use or another (f7 is the windows desktop, with visual studio, f6 is the rstudio desktop, etc) One think I positively hated until recently: copy and paste. Muscle memory means ctrl-shift-c in one application and ctrl-c in another didn't work. So in the terminal, I remapped the sigint signals to ctrl-x with stty. Hitting ctrl-x is just as convenient as ctrl-c and now I can copy paste as needed. ctrl-v to enter verbatim sequences is done with ctrl-q, just like in vim. so ctrl-c and ctrl-v work everywhere. When I catch myself wanting to use the x copy paste buffer, the middle click is not so hard: on a thinkpad keyboard, it is right below the space key. But I just prefer ctrl-v. The luxury of having 2 independant copy-paste buffers is appreciable for some tasks however :) Anyway, sorry for the long reply. I just don't have a lot of opportunities to talk about my setup. I am some kind of an optimization freak, I know it. But I don't want an interface to bother me. I have been using that for the last 3 or 4 years after giving up on OSX, and it has one great quality: I don't have to think about it. It just work the way I want. YMMV of course.

jerguismi 10y ago

The one reason why I would prefer tmux over screen is that it is possible to script it. AFAIK screen is much more difficult to script.

ngoldbaum 10y ago
Screen has awful support for unicode. When people started using emoji a lot on IRC i swtiched so irssi would stop moji-baking.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gaur 10y ago

Looks like a nice .tmux.conf. Wonder if it's online anywhere.

Artemis2 10y ago
From the author's GitHub repository: https://github.com/keeganlow/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf https://github.com/keeganlow/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf
- orbitingpluto 10y ago
  Long time tmux user. Thanks for posting the .tmux.conf link. Modified the window decorator line as sometimes you can't always tell which pane you are in: set-option -g set-titles-string '#(whoami)@#H session: #S window: #I-#W pane: #P' Also noticed that the status right only updates the time if you perform a tmux op.

minhajuddin 10y ago

I use a tool called tummy (https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy full disclosure: built by me) which allows me to create a Tmuxfile per project. A typical file looks like this: session "liveform" directory "/home/minhajuddin/r/liveform/frontend" window "src", [ pane("vim TODO"), ] window "server-pry", [ pane("puma --port 3000 --config <(echo '')"), pane("rails c", :horizontal), ] window "play", [ pane("git status"), ] window "misc", [ pane("sidekiq"), #pane("httpdebug", :horizontal), pane("cd ~/s/html; fs", :horizontal), pane("guard", :horizontal), ] # vim: filetype=ruby

dxhdr 10y ago
Your github seems to be missing the code! require "tummy/version" module Tummy # Your code goes here... end
- minhajuddin 10y ago
  All of the code is actually in a executable script https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy/blob/master/exe/tummy https://github.com/minhajuddin/tummy/blob/master/exe/tummy I am a bit biased, but it has been working very nicely for me. It also has ability to pass raw tmux arguments for things which aren't supported by it.
positr0n 10y ago
I used to use tools like that (tummy, teamocil, etc) but I've since discovered tmux-resurrect. It persists tmux sessions, windows, panes, and a whitelist of non-destructive commands like vim and top across reboots. Now my tmux sessions just organically grow and shrink as necessary and I never worry about having to recreate them. Of course I can see the case for combining both tools. If you have a lot of projects, and/or want REPLs loaded you might not want them sitting around in memory for months if you're not going to use them. It is trivial to get working. Just use tmux plugin manager to install tmux-resurrect and tmux-continuum. https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm Example usage in my dotfiles: https://github.com/positron/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L72-L99 https://github.com/positron/dotfiles/blob/master/.tmux.conf#...

mcescalante 10y ago

I've been using tmux heavily in my local development workflow for the last 6 months or so, and it absolutely pays off to have three window tiles in a single terminal window at a bare minimum. I am also using teamocil to manage windows and panes in tmux, although it's not needed at all: https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil https://github.com/remiprev/teamocil When I set up initially on OSX, the conf took me a few to get right so that I have some mousing abilities and reasonable vim support. Here is a copy of my (simple) tmux.conf file: https://gist.github.com/mcescalante/004e649d8484574ce9d296ad69a80a08 https://gist.github.com/mcescalante/004e649d8484574ce9d296ad...

joshuakarjala 10y ago
How do you get into VI copy mode?
- mcescalante 10y ago
  Either (v) for visual and the arrow keys, or (V) to select entire current line, then (y) to yank. (yy) will also yank lines without entering visual mode, which I use a lot. If you're asking how I copy in general from stdout with the cursor, I select the text (selection appears yellow) and press Enter and it copies to the clipboard :)

joatmon-snoo 10y ago

When I was first introduced to tmux, I was really excited by having a terminal session I could reattach to. I was never able to get very deep into it though: (1) a lot of the time a single script would get me up to speed, (2) the extra layer of abstraction broke some stuff I was doing, and (3) I couldn't make heads or tails of a lot of the tmux documentation. I'll definitely take a second look at a lot of the things people are posting here, but in the meantime, is there somewhere I can actually learn how to use tmux properly?

clarry 10y ago
I think you should give the man page & built in documentation another chance. It's not that long (maybe 40-50 pages printed) and you can skip a few sections that you'll know to look up if you need them. You can also skip the detailed descriptions of most commands and options. Just having the important shortcuts memorized and having a general idea of what commands you have and what they do is all you need. Don't forget to read the examples.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
estreeper 10y ago
Half a dozen commands will get you 90% of the way there. After you've run tmux: ctrl+b followed by... % - split pane vertically " - split pane horizontally arrow keys - change pane you're typing in :new-window 2 - switch to window 2 x - kill pane d - detach Command line arguments: tmux list-sessions tmux attach #will attach to last session by default tmux attach -t0 #will attach to session 0
- mickael-kerjean 10y ago
  A nice and convenient shortcut for: tmux list-sessions tmux ls
dguaraglia 10y ago
I've found that adding a simple configuration makes tmux a) nicer to look at b) somewhat more intuitive (the default colors made the screen confusing to me.) This is my current configuration: https://gist.github.com/dguaraglia/f15f39f339545041845612a5bb1fbc01 https://gist.github.com/dguaraglia/f15f39f339545041845612a5b... With that and using tmuxp to manage a context for each of my projects, I can quickly "launch" a project and have a window with an editing pane, a pane to run tests and a pane to run deployment commands/anything else, all of the panes are already using the correct Python virtualenv, etc. This is a pretty comprehensive cheatsheet: https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058 https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058

godmodus 10y ago

screen master race reporting it! that said, i do mix screen on the local machine and tmux on the remote machine. lazy, but does the trick. of course one can script either to do everything one needs.

beefsack 10y ago

I started writing a terminal multiplexer in Rust, partially because I wanted to fix clearing ANSI escape codes to EOL, but also because I wanted to try and come up with a multiplexer that had very similar shortcuts and commands to Vim.

nicwest 10y ago
How did it go?
Lio 10y ago
That sounds like an interesting project. Another approach might be to use NeoVim which now has a built in terminal emulator. [1] [1]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/nvim_terminal_emulator.html https://neovim.io/doc/user/nvim_terminal_emulator.html

edem 10y ago

I've never heard of tmux. Where should I look? Little hint?

petepete 10y ago
https://danielmiessler.com/study/tmux/ https://danielmiessler.com/study/tmux/
derwiki 10y ago
... first Google hit? https://tmux.github.io/ https://tmux.github.io/
- edem 10y ago
  You misunderstood the question. I'm more interested in how a terminal multiplexer is good for me.

draw_down 10y ago

I prefer opening tabs in my terminal window instead of this or other similar tools. It's not an exact replacement but I try to avoid learning and remembering new sets of keystrokes, and there are some other small UI wins in my opinion.

Vekz 10y ago
I agree with you. I like that I can rip off terminal tabs and move them around. Also move them to different virtual desktops. I tend to have a virtual desktop for each project I work on keeping things spatially separate that way. One piece of functionality missing form this setup is the "pre configured scripted dev environments" but i've used this tool https://github.com/achiu/consular https://github.com/achiu/consular to achieve that behavior

_vya7 10y ago

This is actually why I prefer Emacs. I can literally do all my development work in Emacs, with a full-featured shell (e-shell), directory explorer (dir-ed), REPL and full IDE for Clojure (CIDER). It's pretty great.

taeric 10y ago
TRAMP really has changed the way I look at managing remote machines. Learning to set the remote path somewhat sanely has almost completely eliminated my usage of regular terminals. I do wish it was a little better on latency sometimes. But overall this environment is ridiculously nice.
adamrt 10y ago
Shameless plug for https://github.com/adamrt/sane-term https://github.com/adamrt/sane-term I use it (and created it) so I could use ansi-term instead of e-shell. Then C-c C-j lets you treat the term like a normal buffer (move, yank, etc), and C-c C-k when you are done lets you switch back to normal term style buffer.
elwell 10y ago
> a full-featured shell (e-shell) My experience wasn't so simple. Griefs: coloring, git support problems, bash aliases. I'm sure there's a way to get it to work, but I wouldn't call it a full featured shell out-of-the-box; at least, it doesn't really compare with Terminal.
- sdegutis 10y ago
  For git I use Magit, I don't have any bash aliases, and anything I would normally see coloring in when using bash in a real terminal has a full-fledged Emacs analog.
wry_discontent 10y ago
I've found that emacs mostly eliminates the need for a shell. Most of what I was doing can be handled by Magit, Dired, and Async shell commands. The only thing I really use the shell for these days in long running npm jobs.

simosx 10y ago

I use Byobu (http://byobu.co/ http://byobu.co/), which is a configuration layer over tmux. It's tmux with nicely packaged features.

dleslie 10y ago
As a screen user, Byobu is the best alternative. When I muscle-memoried screen commands the first time Byobu detected my actions and asked if my configuration ought to be changed to use screen bindings. Now that is UX done right.
- hughw 10y ago
  Yes -- same for ctrl-a, its normal escape sequence. It detects emacs users typing ctrl-a and invites you to map it the way you want.

patrickdavey 10y ago

If you use tmux and vim, and if you run tests, then you must look at janko-m/vim-test and vim-dispatch. Runs any test seamlessly in the background. Vim-dispatch also has the best intro video to anything ever ;) https://vimeo.com/63116209 https://vimeo.com/63116209

rcarmo 10y ago
Tim Pope is awesome. I was just staring and grinning at the end. :)
flukus 10y ago
Is vim dispatch still necessary now that there is native background processes?
- patrickdavey 10y ago
  Good question, I assume not, but the plugins work so.... I guess maybe the incredible and prolific Tim Pope well maybe update vim dispatch to work with the background processes.
anonymousDan 10y ago
Video is awesome. What is the advantage over just having a separate tmux/screen session in which you launch your command though?
- patrickdavey 10y ago
  Well, the nice thing here is that with the integration between vim-test and vim-dispatch is that you don't have to do anything for having the tests run in a separate session. It just works. I mean really you _are_ just having it run in a separate session, just more smoothly. If the tests pass then the tmux window the tests were run in will just disappear, if not, you get popped back to the quickfix window with the errors listed. Give it a go and see how you like it! :)

Touche 10y ago

To me tmux, like a lot of tools, suffers from bad defaults that makes it less enjoyable to use. One example is not being able to scroll with a mouse. I usually find someone's tmux.conf online and use it, but always run into strange problems that I don't have the energy figuring out. My current conf suffers from the navigation bar going completely black when I try to rename a pane (can't see what i'm typing). Really wish more tools took care into making solid defaults and not assuming all users are like the ones on their mailing lists.

rhinoceraptor 10y ago
That's just how (most) command line tools are. You have to invest some time to configure them. And hopefully you're not the type who will fiddle with the settings too much once you have stuff working. I use GNU stow to install my ZSH, tmux, vim, etc. settings on new computers and it works well for me.
shriek 10y ago
Won't be able to answer all your questions but to enable your mouse scroll add the following to your .tmux.conf set -g mouse on Likewise, to select from mouse you probably need to press "Shift" in Linux or "Fn" in Mac. I've had more issues with Mac than in Linux with tmux tbh.
- Touche 10y ago
  I didn't ask a question, I know how to fix the issues.
  - syaz1 10y ago
    Is your reply really necessary? It doesn't contribute anything. At least other people having the same issues which you know the solutions but don't share, can benefit. Sorry, it just came out wrong to me.
    - Touche 10y ago

mrbill 10y ago

I've used screen for darn near 20 years now. Have tried to switch to tmux, but even with screen-like keybindings, I end up running into something[0] that makes me switch back because screen is just muscle memory for me at this point. [0] like switching to a non-existent-numbered screen to get a list of which ones I do have...

Graziano_M 10y ago
The zoom feature alone should be enough to say goodbye to screen.
jlgaddis 10y ago
I was the same way when I first started using tmux. I just "fixed" the keybindings in tmux to what I was used to and went about my business. It is slightly inconvenient the first time I fire up tmux (with the defaults) on a new host. I just take a 30 second break, create my customized ~/.tmux.conf, and continue on like nothing happened.

rcarmo 10y ago

Hmmm. I had no idea there was powerline for tmux (I used powerline a couple of times in vim, then lost patience with it because sometimes I'd lose the wedges for some reason. It was early days then).

st3v3r 10y ago

It's definitely a cool tool if most of your development uses the command line. As a mobile developer, however, most of my development is spent in IDEs. Alas, that means my use of tmux is limited.

hendry 10y ago

As developers we need a super simple way to log a session. Unfortunately that's non-trivial in tmux. https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/629#issuecomment-258415386 https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/629#issuecomment-2584153...

AceJohnny2 10y ago

"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection" David J. Wheeler Tmux/Screen provides an extra redirectable abstraction layer over the terminal device. The biggest complaint I regularly see about it is that people are used to the screen keybindings. I wonder why not add an abstraction layer there, where keypresses really call commands that perform the actions, and you could reconfigure these. This is how Emacs has done it for 30 years...

snerbles 10y ago
> The biggest complaint I regularly see about it is that people are used to the screen keybindings. That's my problem with Tmux. Ctrl-a,d is already burned into muscle memory, and for my applications Screen is "good enough".
- jitl 10y ago
  Tmux expects you to rebind its leader to Ctrl-a once you're ready to move off of screen. Otherwise, it's default works nicely if you are nesting screen inside of Tmux or vis-versa
  - AceJohnny2 10y ago
    I use Ctrl-a as the "go back to beginning of line" shortcut that Readline-capable programs offer by default [1]. That's actually one reason I never got used to Screen ;) [1] that is, using the Emacs keybindings it exposes by default. I know you can change that through .inputrc
    - jyriand 10y ago
      I'm using Ctrl-a on tmux, and to get back to beginning on line I just have to press it twice Ctrl-a Ctrl-a.
- alaaibrahim 10y ago
  in your .tmux.conf set -g prefix C-a unbind C-b bind C-a send-prefix

mambodog 10y ago

If you want to get a taste of the benefits of tmux without having to learn anything new, I recommend using iTerm and setting up an alias for 'ssh [your server] -t "tmux -CC attach || tmux -CC"' Just running that command will connect to your server and attach to an existing tmux session, or create a new one if needed, and make use of iTerm's tmux integration, so you can use the standard macOS keyboard commands (or the UI) to do things like switch tabs, make new tabs, close them, make new windows, etc. all using tmux and a single ssh connection. You can press 'esc' in the command window to detach from your session and when you return (just using that alias) all your work is just as you left it.

fulafel 10y ago
Are there terminal emulators on other platforms that offer similar tmux integration?
- xemdetia 10y ago
  'tmux' is actually something that runs server-side if you are ssh'ing into something, it should work with any terminal emulator the same way as GNU screen would if you ever used that, e.g. PuTTY works fine for tmux.
  - michaelmior 10y ago
    I believe the parent was referring to iTerm's native understanding of tmux windows which is certainly not supported in all terminal emulators.
fredsir 10y ago
I never knew about this. Thanks! When I do this, it opens a new window with the "attached tmux running inside" and the old window is running in "tmux mode". Is it possible to not have a new window open, but use the window where the command is run instead?
blfr 10y ago
Use mosh[1] instead of ssh for superior handling of weaker connections and roaming. You close your laptop one place, go elsewhere, switch to LTE, whatever, open the lid and you're back on. Don't even need to reconnect. [1] https://mosh.org/ https://mosh.org/

mmanfrin 10y ago

Does anyone know the color scheme used in the examples? It is very nice.

du_bing 10y ago

I recommend the book: Tmux--Productive Mouse-Free Developmenet, written by Brian P. Hogan. It's a concise and practical book about Tmux. There are some usable configuration in it, and you can learn something about concepts like session, window, pane in the book. After you combine vim style with tmux, it's quite perfect to do anything in the terminal. Haha, enjoy!

hhsnopek 10y ago

I dropped tmux for neovim terminal emulator with neovim-remote to hook into my existing nvim session. So far so go!

cyphar 10y ago
How do you deal with :terminal replacing your current buffer (it close it when you exit the shell). And the fact that as far as I can tell none of your keybindings work when you're inside :terminal?
- hhsnopek 10y ago
  Here's my terminal mappings: https://github.com/hhsnopek/dotfiles/blob/master/.nvimrc#L93 https://github.com/hhsnopek/dotfiles/blob/master/.nvimrc#L93 Otherwise I use neovim-remote (https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote https://github.com/mhinz/neovim-remote), which will soon be natively in neovim, but until then you can connect to your vim instance and either create a new buffer or replace the existing one. You perform your things and then use `:w | bp` and jump back a buffer if you created a new one. Similarly my keybindings can be mapped just as I did in my dotfiles (first link). Probably my favorite part is being able to search my terminal instance in vim style with `/` and navigate as I would in any other file

mark_l_watson 10y ago

I do a lot of work in ssh shells, and somehow years ago I got out of the habit of using screen or tmux. I just took 20 minutes to go through the tutorial linked in this article. With a pane open as a shell and another pane opened with emacs+intero almost immediately it felt better than using different ssh shells, which is what I usually do. The control-b prefix character use never interfered with any of my activities.

baby 10y ago

I use Tmux resurrect[1] with Tmux continuum[2] so that after rebooting my laptop, my tmux session is restored. [1]: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect [2]: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum

garou 10y ago
If you use ViM, vim-obsession[1] work with tmux-ressurect[2] to restore vim -S [1]: https://github.com/tpope/vim-obsession https://github.com/tpope/vim-obsession [2]: https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect/blob/master/docs/restoring_vim_and_neovim_sessions.md https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-resurrect/blob/master/d...

susam 10y ago

One of the first things I had to with tmux is figure out a convenient prefix key. I found the default prefix key (C-b) to be a little clumsy to use. After a little experimentation, C-j has become my secondary tmux prefix key of choice. It doesn't interfere with my shell or Vim usage. C-j is redundant in shell as well as Vim because it does what pressing the Enter key would do. Further, in Vim, C-j is synonymous to j in normal and visual modes. C-j is also very easy to type because my right forefinger always returns to j while resting. This is what my ~/.tmux.conf looks like. # Set C-j as secondary prefix key. # C-b remains intact as primary prefix key. set -g prefix2 C-j bind-key C-j send-prefix -2 # Eliminate delay after <Esc> key press in Vim. set -g escape-time 0 # Let Vim use 256 colors. set -g default-terminal screen-256color

ams6110 10y ago
I use C-], but basically pick anything that isn't a common bash or emacs cursor movement. I can't use C-b as that is my "backspace"
spinningarrow 10y ago
I ended up using C-s. Unfortunately C-j is taken over by vim-tmux-navigator (which I don't mind at all).

jlebrech 10y ago

linux/unix as an IDE has it's merits. are there any specific distros that focus on setting up an environment?

johncoltrane 10y ago

Benefits of using tmux if you don't need it: none.

gitaarik 10y ago

I came from screen when I started using tmux. I spend quite some time to make the key bindings similar to screen, however, kept some things the tmux way because it was better. For people interested, this is my complete tmux.conf: https://github.com/gitaarik/tmuxconf/blob/master/.tmux.conf https://github.com/gitaarik/tmuxconf/blob/master/.tmux.conf

ghshephard 10y ago

The one issue I have with tmux, versus using iterm natively, is that every single time I have to reboot my machine for an operating system upgrade, I lose all the terminal history of my tmux sessions - whereas with iterm, when the machine restarts, it restarts with the all the windows and terminal histories intact. Its ironic that tmux doesn't provide any mechanism to save your terminal history between reboots. Tools like tmuxinator/tmux-resurrect will save your session/window/pane configs, but you lose all your history... If I could just recover my (typically very valuable) terminal history between reboots, tmux would be the perfect tool for managing my terminal environments...

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igg 10y ago
tmux-resurrect seems to have an option to save bash history. When combined with tmux-continuum, it should happen seamlessly.
- ghshephard 10y ago
  The history I'm referring to is the scrollback buffer. The work that I do, which is predominantly interactive in a REPL like environment with remote devices, has a rich history of information in each window/pane. I dread losing those scrollback buffers every time I have to restart tmux.

chriswarbo 10y ago

I'll give a shout-out to DVTM ( http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm ) which I've been using successfully for a couple of years. Prior to that I used tmux for a few years, and screen before that. I suppose the only compelling reason to use DVTM is that it acts like a tiling WM, so if you use one (I use XMonad http://xmonad.org http://xmonad.org ) the experience is basically the same (mod-h/mod-l to resize, mod-j/mod-k to navigate windows, mod-space to switch layout, etc.). The main reason I switched is my preference to avoid bloat. DVTM doesn't do everything tmux and screen do, it only does window management. I use dtach ( http://dtach.sourceforge.net http://dtach.sourceforge.net ) for persistence. I previously used abduco ( http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/abduco ), but it segfaulted on me a couple of times (months apart, in a non-reproducible way); haven't tried it for about a year, so it might have stabilised. I use st ( http://st.suckless.org http://st.suckless.org ) as my terminal, again to avoid bloat.

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cm3 10y ago
I cannot use st because it still has corner cases that xterm works well but st doesn't yet, and I find the need to patch the sources hard to maintain when a new release comes out and has refactorings included. But I must say that st's font rendering of Unicode is more complete than rxvt-unicode or xterm. With the same font configured in all three, st is the one that manages to render the most glyphs of plan9port's unicode sample file. Would be great to have the same in urxvt or xterm.

hansjorg 10y ago

As an unsophisticated screen user without any interest in what seems to be a turf war, what is the deal with the never ending stream of "Use tmux!" articles on here?

Samathy 10y ago

I've been a GNU Screen user for a good while. The increased productivity is wonderful. However, I'm prevented from switching to Tmux because you can't attach to the same session from multiple terminals, and show a different window in each terminal. I use this all the time in Screen - in Tmux, changing the window being viewed in one terminal, changes all other terminals attached to that session.