16 ms·

Tmux 2.0 released

353 points by byaruhaf 11y ago

ceronman 11y ago
I recently discovered Tmux after years of using GNU Screen. I love it. It feels much easier to use and more intuitive, easier to script. Also integration with terminal emulators such as iTerm2 on OS X or Byobu on Linux is fantastic. Tmux earned a place in my list of favorite daily used tools.
- dorfsmay 11y ago
  The biggest advantage of tmux over screen is its ability to automatically resize based on the smaller terminal connected to it. I know there are a lot other advantages, but this in itself was a game changer for me.
postila 11y ago
Why it's 2.0? I don't see any really significant changes, or maybe I missed smth.
- andyl 11y ago
  Maybe because Tmux 2.0 has some breaking changes??
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - postila 11y ago
    like what?
    - untothebreach 11y ago
      Incompatible Changes ==================== * The choose-list command has been removed. * 'terminal-overrides' is now a server option, not a session option. * 'message-limit' is now a server option, not a session option. * 'monitor-content' option has been removed. * 'pane_start_path' option has been removed. * The "info" mechanism which used to (for some commands) provide feedback has been removed, and like other commands, they now produce nothing on success.
  - raimue 11y ago
    They broke features between releases before without increasing the major version number. While trying to use the same .tmux.conf over multiple versions of tmux 1.x, I often had to adapt the config file to settings being renamed or just going away without a deprecation warning beforehand.
- elwin 11y ago
  tmux is an OpenBSD-influenced project. Those projects' version numbers often progress from N.9 to N+1.0 without having any special significance.
stormbrew 11y ago
The main thing that I wish I could have in tmux is the ability to disable other sessions attached to the current terminal without outright detaching them. I intend to go back to that other machine at some point, I just don't want its tiny screen making my current session tiny for no reason. Maybe this is actually possible already and I just haven't found it?
- jbnicolai 11y ago
  Say you want to attach to session 0 (use `tmux list-sessions` to see available sessions). A trick I've found is not attaching to that session, but starting a new session sharing all underlying windows. The model in tmux is [session]->[windows]->[panes], but something I did not realize until recently is that [session] can be multiple. So rather than `tmux attach -t 0` use `tmux new-session -t 0`, allowing you to interact with the same windows without disturbing the other session.
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    Is this a feature in 2.0? It doesn't seem to work for me - I still see a large part of my terminal window filled with the dots, since the other session's terminal window is much smaller.
    - jbnicolai 11y ago
      Ah, I forgot to mention: the resize -if the terminal-window is smaller- will still happen, but as long as the two sessions are operating on a different window they can be of different size.
      - pavel_lishin 11y ago
        I think I'm missing something. Terminal A: 300x10 lines (long across, but short) Terminal B: 120x30 lines (standard new terminal size) I have a tmux session running in A; I open terminal B, and attach to it with -new-session. My first pane is trimmed to the height of Terminal A. If I do prefix-c (create new pane), the new pane is now the size of Terminal B - hurray! But if I open Terminal C, which is yet another size, and attach to my existing session, it resizes every pane in Terminal B to the size of Terminal C; and when I disconnect from Terminal C, those panes do not appear to switch back to what they now should be, unconstrained by Terminal C. (If I didn't explain this clearly, I can provide some screenshots later.)
bluehex 11y ago
It makes me sad to see a respectable piece of open source software hosted on this site with its intrusive advertising practices such as ads with fake "install" buttons on the download page. What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source?
- res0nat0r 11y ago
  All I see after clicking download is a direct link to the file, which is in fact just a .tar.gz.
  - jbnicolai 11y ago
    Are you sure you don't have any ad blocker installed?
    - vampirechicken 11y ago
      A reasonable followup question why wouldn't one have an ad blocker installed?
      - sp332 11y ago
        The original question was, why use a host that tries to show you ads in the first place?
      - GrantSolar 11y ago
        Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. Why have an adblocker installed when you can avoid the sites with obnoxious adverts?
        jkyle 11y ago
        Sometimes I have to get useful tools from them....like tmux. As to why I use Adblock, I've never. Not once. Ever. Bought anything from an ad on a website. I _have_ bought books and such from the referral links on blogs (which adblock doesn't block). The reason I use adblock is because I'm not the demographic ads on websites are targeting. So websites aren't losing any revenue by me not seeing their ads.
andyl 11y ago
I'm looking forward to the combination of Tmux and Neovim. Both (will) support detached/shared sessions, both are scriptable/configurable, both can be driven by a remote process. I believe with Tmux and Neovim you could put together anything from a simple test/editing environment to a full-blown IDE.
- vampirechicken 11y ago
  But you can already script vim...
  - rspeer 11y ago
    Only with blocking operations, though.
  - andyl 11y ago
    Yeah but - I like Neovim's msgpack-api, and the built-in terminal emulation. On the Neovim roadmap: attach/detach from a background session, multiple screens with different sizes.
- catern 11y ago
  Well, no need to really look forward... You already have every one of those capabilities with Emacs. >you could put together anything from a simple test/editing environment to a full-blown IDE. People already do this with Emacs.
  - andyl 11y ago
    Emacs is great and I know lots of people who love evil mode. I prefer vim because it comes pre-installed - good for ops. Many of my tools have embedded Lua, so it's great that I can exercise my Lua skills with Neovim. None of my other tools embeds elisp, so for me, elisp is a dead-end.
    - catern 11y ago
      Neovim won't be preinstalled for a long time. Possibly it never will be. Also, writing Elisp is not far from writing Guile Scheme, and there are many tools that embed Guile.
jbnicolai 11y ago
For those who are just getting started with tmux: I advise looking around others' .tmux.conf files for some sensible settings. Like Vim, Tmux ships with a lot of powerful features disabled by default. My absolute favorite has to be binding a hotkey to opening URLs in the current window [0]. See [1] for a small demo I just recorded. To get started, here's my current config: [1] [0]: https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L129 https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L12... [1]: http://recordit.co/vdxy09GpYG http://recordit.co/vdxy09GpYG [2]: https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf
- Jaepa 11y ago
  You use ctl+s as your bind?
  - jbnicolai 11y ago
    I do. It's closer to the prefix/leader I was used to when using screen (<C-a>), and I find it easier to type.
    - JoshTriplett 11y ago
      Why not use C-a?
      - GrandTheftR 11y ago
        I assume ctrl-s is easier to press than ctrl-a, I have trouble with ctrl-a on Mac with reconfigured CapsLock, and my bind key is ctrl-space.
        Lio 11y ago
        That's why I remap the right alt key on mac (laptops) to ctrl. Having left right balanced ctrl keys is much more important for my workflow.
      - 11y ago
tomswartz07 11y ago
The release notes don't say: Is this a session-breaking update? I'd hate to run the update only to have it kill my current TMUX session. Devs - if you're reading this: PLEASE indicate if I could update without restarting the session.
- sikhnerd 11y ago
  Does not appear to be a session-breaking update. I just updated with no ill effects.
- albemuth 11y ago
  have you tried something like tmuxinator so create/restore sessions?
  - zserge 11y ago
    May I suggest a more lightweight alternative for Tmux/Screen/DVTM sessions - http://zserge.com/blog/mucks2.html http://zserge.com/blog/mucks2.html ?
- thomasadam 11y ago
  Actually, I already provide this in the release notes. A PROTOCOL_VERSION bump means restarting tmux. We didn't do this between 1.9a -> 2.0, hence why it wasn't mentioned. Look at the release notes for 1.9, you'll see it was mentioned there. Simples.
funksta 11y ago
I don't see anything about it, so I'm assuming there's still no support for "true" (24 bit) colour? Would really love if they added that, since Neovim now supports it.
byaruhaf 11y ago
I'm excited by the improvements in the pane navigation. I'd have to try it out to get the feel of it but looks like an improvement.
agumonkey 11y ago
I use tmux all the time, but I've read about dtach/dvtm. http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/#why http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/#why Anyone using that instead ?
- chriswarbo 11y ago
  I'm using dvtm, after trying screen and tmux in the past. No particular reason other than it's Xmonad-like layout switching. It's crashed once, in a few months of usage. Make of that what you will.
  - chriswarbo 11y ago
    Hmm, make that twice. Maybe I'll go back to tmux ;)
- micampe 11y ago
  I use dtach because detaching from the terminal is the only feature I would use in tmux.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    That was one argument I saw on an article, dvtm carries a simpler self-sufficient task and is far smaller than tmux. Separation of concerns etc.
- farva 11y ago
  Have a look at abduco as well. It's a (IMHO) more user-friendly (and supposedly cleaner) dtach replacement, from the author of dvtm.
possibilistic 11y ago
Does anyone else wish tmux were modal like vim, ie. without a "leader" key? My conf file has a ton of custom key bindings for window / pane management, and I'd love for them to go away or become simplified by simply dropping into a "window management mode". Likewise, I'd like the command mode to stay open until I close it. I have some scripted hacks to do this, but it's nowhere near what I'd expect from true modality. One of these days I guess I could get around to writing a patch. This single feature is probably my most wanted for any software at the moment.
- jbnicolai 11y ago
  Odd. I'd consider myself a 'power user', but I hardly ever find I have that need. Could you describe what you do when you're entering several command-mode lines in succession?
- geoka9 11y ago
  Maybe because I'm an emacs user, I find it pretty intuitive. As a ratpoison/conkeror/emacs/tmux user I often find myself juggling at least 4 sets of prefix keys. It works surprisingly well, I just made sure they are in different places on the keyboard, so that I don't mix them up.
- Cushman 11y ago
  Yes! Probably my biggest workflow pipe dream since getting some fluency in vim is to be able to drop into an "outside mode". I've cobbled something vaguely modal together for bspwm with abuse of shkd, so a lot of the binds map similarly, but like your solution it's far from ideal. As for "Why would you want this?" For me, the straightforward answer is "modes are modular". A core concept in vim is that your input can be thought of as a string describing the edit you wish to make, and modes help me keep that manageable in my head: I can first think about the mode I plan to enter, and then separately what I plan to do under the constraints of that mode. It's a little hard to explain, and I'm sure acolytes of other paradigms have their own philosophies, but it fits in really well to my workflow. It's a subtle thing in the limited world of text editing, but I definitely miss the semantics whenever I leave it, whether to a terminal or a browser or whatever. So for me, it comes down to wanting to bring the cost of task switching closer to what it is in the editor.
floatboth 11y ago
Still no true color support :-(
- geoffharcourt 11y ago
  It looks like the true color ticket on tmux was closed out: http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/140/ http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/140/ I was applying this patch to 1.9 on my machine and it worked well: https://gist.github.com/JohnMorales/0579990993f6dec19e83 https://gist.github.com/JohnMorales/0579990993f6dec19e83 Haven't had a chance to see if the same diff can be applied to 2.0 yet.
  - funksta 11y ago
    I tried the same patch on 1.9a but couldn't get it to work (tmux built fine but no dice with 24 bit colours). Very curious to hear if it works with 2.0.
- nicm 11y ago
  a couple of people have asked me about how true colour should look but none have sent code so far, it's not a very interesting feature to me so it'll need someone who cares about it to do it
xucheng 11y ago
This is still failing: bind-key -t vi-copy Y copy-end-of-line \; run-shell "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh -c 'tmux save-buffer - | pbcopy'"
andrewstuart2 11y ago
Holy moley, I knew there were 24 function keys at one point, but 63? That's crazy! I love learning little things like that. I'm definitely glad modifier+key shortcuts are so common. I like it when shortcuts can be somewhat mnemonic (and I love vim).
zatkin 11y ago
>CHANGES FROM 1.9a to 2.0 6 March 2015 I think they meant 6 May 2015?
nickysielicki 11y ago
Why should I use tmux over screen? Why do I use screen over tmux?: - its old. A stable version is on every distro. Trying to start a screen session is more likely to succeed on any given box than a tmux session. I see my friends wrestle with their tmux setup being more recent on one box than another and their nested sessions get screwed up. I never have any issue. - I know it, and for my simple use it does everything perfectly. I can split panes, I can detach and come back, I can nest sessions. - screen can attach to serial terminals. What's the killer feature of tmux that I'm missing out on?
- evol262 11y ago
  It's maintainable, modern code, which screen is not. Screen is not dead yet, but it eventually will be.
  - Peaker 11y ago
    He didn't ask which one is nicer to hack on.
    - ChristianBundy 11y ago
      No, they asked "Why should I use tmux over screen?", which the answer was relevant to.
      - Peaker 11y ago
        Doesn't seem that way to me at all.
- exDM69 11y ago
  Not sure if it works in GNU Screen but tmux can be controlled from the command line. Examples: tmux show-buffer | vipe | bash - tmux send-keys -t debugger run This allows nice ad hoc scripts that are composable in a very Unix-y way.
- perlgeek 11y ago
  I use both, and enjoy that they have different control keys by default, so I can nest them painlessly without need for any configuration. Also, tmux works out-of-the-box for accounts that you su'ed into, something I never managed with screen.
ethagnawl 11y ago
Does anyone have Tmux 2.0 working alongside Tmuxinator? I know the project only claims support for 1.8, but I've been using it alongside 1.9 (mostly without issue) for many months.
cm3 11y ago
Does tmux still have no flow control? Just compare how tmux locks up when you `tar xfv linux-4.0.tar.xz` and screen doesn't. None of the knobs to control output throttling helped. How do you get around this problem?
- chirayuk 11y ago
  I run `stty -ixon -ixoff` once and that fixes the issue for me.
  - cm3 11y ago
    That's a different flow control than what I'm talking about. tmux is just overwhelmed and cannot keep up with the output from tar whereas screen takes care of it and still responds to user input. Frankly I'm amazed there's only one or two posts about this on the internet as there's more than the pathological linux tarball extract where this problem will lock up tmux.
    - nicm 11y ago
      yes, this sucks but i have never myself been able to find a reliable case where screen reacts any better than tmux (for example, both behave similarly with yes(1)) the c0-* stuff is poor (i'm tempted to remove it) but it is not an easy problem to solve, people want tmux to be fast, except when they don't. it's also tricky remotely where ssh and the network stack are buffering too
cm3 11y ago
I wish it was possible to have screen-like bindings that don't require explicitly defining them all so that you don't have to unpress Ctrl each time. In screen you can press C-a c quickly but for that to work in tmux you have to add this: bind-key C-c new-window
- MikeKusold 11y ago
  Is line 2 what you are looking for? https://github.com/kusold/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux.conf#L2 https://github.com/kusold/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux.conf#L2 I just tried it out, and `C-a c` created a new windows for me.
  - cm3 11y ago
    Tried that before and with 2.0 but it doesn't work. You still have to release both 'Ctrl' and 'a' before pressing 'c'. In screen you don't have to and chaining works comfortably.
- scottjad 11y ago
  > In screen you can press C-a c quickly Screen just binds C-a c and C-a C-c to the same command, for some values of c.
morenoh149 11y ago
brew install tmux to install on osx. If you already had tmux brew unlink tmux; brew install tmux
- wyclif 11y ago
  Yes, without unlinking, some people are probably going to experience this effect: >brew install tmux Warning: tmux-1.9a already installed Then again: >brew unlink tmux Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/tmux/1.9a... 4 symlinks removed >brew install tmux Warning: tmux-1.9a already installed, it's just not linked
luxpir 11y ago
Anyone else slightly disappointed that connecting to a tmux session with mosh breaks mouse-mode? That fixed, plus session restore, would be the dream.
- nicm 11y ago
  i suspect you need to talk to the mosh guys for this
  - luxpir 11y ago
    True enough. The session restore still stands. I know tmuxinator exists, but as a personal preference I'd prefer it in-built/native. Also to save state, which I'd expect is asking too much.
    - nicm 11y ago
      what do you mean session restore? we could restore the basic layout of sessions, windows, panes but we couldn't restore what was run in them (and it would be dangerous to try)
creack 11y ago
This new release breaks emacs' cursor with iTerm2 :(. Works fine with tmux + Terminal or iTerm2 without tmux though.
pan69 11y ago
I've only recently discovered tmux (feels ashamed). It's fantastic. The only thing I miss is just a sprinkle of mouse interaction. Moving around with the keys is easy enough of course but if you have a terminal in an otherwise desktop environment, it would be really nice to just be able to "click" in a pane to focus it.
- skeuomorf 11y ago
  If you really want this, you should use a tiling window manager and use "focus follows cursor" or "focus on click".
- alaskamiller 11y ago
  Learned Tmux a few weeks ago and use it every day now. You can enable Mouse Mode, on Macs you can install extra Tmux features, and iTerm2 has mouse mode built in.
- thristian 11y ago
  Put "mouse-select-pane on" in .tmux.conf. If you check the tmux manpage and search for 'mouse', there's a whole bunch of mouse-enabling options; you might as well turn them all on -- except for "mouse-utf8", which is a compatibility option that can potentially screw things up. The downside to enabling mouse support in tmux is that it disables mouse support in the outer terminal (the one tmux is running inside). If you select text in tmux, it will go to the tmux clipboard instead of your system clipboard. You can get around that by holding shift before selecting text, but some people get annoyed by the extra action required.
- _cudgel 11y ago
  Try these options: set-option -g mode-mouse on set-option -g mouse-resize-pane on set-option -g mouse-select-pane on set-option -g mouse-select-window on
vhost- 11y ago
This is great news! But I've started to use Tmux less after being REALLY into it. I've slowly replaced it with a tiling window manager because I've noticed my ncurses and curses programs don't draw right in Tmux. I've found a couple work arounds, like using the TERM env var, but it doesn't work for everything. I'm wondering how others have solved this problem, if they have at all.
- greggyb 11y ago
  I run into the opposite. St doesn't play well with n/curses in my experience (mostly corrupt characters on display), and the easiest solution I've seen is to run these programs in a Tmux session. I use Tmux all the time anyway, so this doesn't add any extra overhead for me (mental or system).
coned88 11y ago
I really want tmux or screen to just scroll when I mouse wheel up or press the up arrow on the selected window. I don't like having togo into copy mode.
- smileart 11y ago
  What's wrong with `setw -g mode-mouse on`? Or I simply didn't understand the point.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
freedevbootcamp 11y ago
Congrats to the Tmux team for a great open source tool. Its sad that HN decided to take this moment to talk about sourceforge and not the product announcement.
- wldcordeiro 11y ago
  It's a tool I use daily, I love Tmux!
- bluehex 11y ago
  Yes, I'm also a huge fan! I'm sorry for the derailment. I probably should have put it in a separate post.

353 points by byaruhaf 11y ago

I recently discovered Tmux after years of using GNU Screen. I love it. It feels much easier to use and more intuitive, easier to script. Also integration with terminal emulators such as iTerm2 on OS X or Byobu on Linux is fantastic. Tmux earned a place in my list of favorite daily used tools.

dorfsmay 11y ago
The biggest advantage of tmux over screen is its ability to automatically resize based on the smaller terminal connected to it. I know there are a lot other advantages, but this in itself was a game changer for me.

postila 11y ago

Why it's 2.0? I don't see any really significant changes, or maybe I missed smth.

andyl 11y ago
Maybe because Tmux 2.0 has some breaking changes??
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- postila 11y ago
  like what?
  - untothebreach 11y ago
    Incompatible Changes ==================== * The choose-list command has been removed. * 'terminal-overrides' is now a server option, not a session option. * 'message-limit' is now a server option, not a session option. * 'monitor-content' option has been removed. * 'pane_start_path' option has been removed. * The "info" mechanism which used to (for some commands) provide feedback has been removed, and like other commands, they now produce nothing on success.
- raimue 11y ago
  They broke features between releases before without increasing the major version number. While trying to use the same .tmux.conf over multiple versions of tmux 1.x, I often had to adapt the config file to settings being renamed or just going away without a deprecation warning beforehand.
elwin 11y ago
tmux is an OpenBSD-influenced project. Those projects' version numbers often progress from N.9 to N+1.0 without having any special significance.

stormbrew 11y ago

The main thing that I wish I could have in tmux is the ability to disable other sessions attached to the current terminal without outright detaching them. I intend to go back to that other machine at some point, I just don't want its tiny screen making my current session tiny for no reason. Maybe this is actually possible already and I just haven't found it?

jbnicolai 11y ago
Say you want to attach to session 0 (use `tmux list-sessions` to see available sessions). A trick I've found is not attaching to that session, but starting a new session sharing all underlying windows. The model in tmux is [session]->[windows]->[panes], but something I did not realize until recently is that [session] can be multiple. So rather than `tmux attach -t 0` use `tmux new-session -t 0`, allowing you to interact with the same windows without disturbing the other session.
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  Is this a feature in 2.0? It doesn't seem to work for me - I still see a large part of my terminal window filled with the dots, since the other session's terminal window is much smaller.
  - jbnicolai 11y ago
    Ah, I forgot to mention: the resize -if the terminal-window is smaller- will still happen, but as long as the two sessions are operating on a different window they can be of different size.
    - pavel_lishin 11y ago
      I think I'm missing something. Terminal A: 300x10 lines (long across, but short) Terminal B: 120x30 lines (standard new terminal size) I have a tmux session running in A; I open terminal B, and attach to it with -new-session. My first pane is trimmed to the height of Terminal A. If I do prefix-c (create new pane), the new pane is now the size of Terminal B - hurray! But if I open Terminal C, which is yet another size, and attach to my existing session, it resizes every pane in Terminal B to the size of Terminal C; and when I disconnect from Terminal C, those panes do not appear to switch back to what they now should be, unconstrained by Terminal C. (If I didn't explain this clearly, I can provide some screenshots later.)

bluehex 11y ago

It makes me sad to see a respectable piece of open source software hosted on this site with its intrusive advertising practices such as ads with fake "install" buttons on the download page. What is the advantage of using Sourceforge these days when github and bitbucket are free for open source?

res0nat0r 11y ago
All I see after clicking download is a direct link to the file, which is in fact just a .tar.gz.
- jbnicolai 11y ago
  Are you sure you don't have any ad blocker installed?
  - vampirechicken 11y ago
    A reasonable followup question why wouldn't one have an ad blocker installed?
    - sp332 11y ago
      The original question was, why use a host that tries to show you ads in the first place?
    - GrantSolar 11y ago
      Because it's how 99% of websites get their funding, allowing them to survive. Why have an adblocker installed when you can avoid the sites with obnoxious adverts?
      - jkyle 11y ago
        Sometimes I have to get useful tools from them....like tmux. As to why I use Adblock, I've never. Not once. Ever. Bought anything from an ad on a website. I _have_ bought books and such from the referral links on blogs (which adblock doesn't block). The reason I use adblock is because I'm not the demographic ads on websites are targeting. So websites aren't losing any revenue by me not seeing their ads.

andyl 11y ago

I'm looking forward to the combination of Tmux and Neovim. Both (will) support detached/shared sessions, both are scriptable/configurable, both can be driven by a remote process. I believe with Tmux and Neovim you could put together anything from a simple test/editing environment to a full-blown IDE.

vampirechicken 11y ago
But you can already script vim...
- rspeer 11y ago
  Only with blocking operations, though.
- andyl 11y ago
  Yeah but - I like Neovim's msgpack-api, and the built-in terminal emulation. On the Neovim roadmap: attach/detach from a background session, multiple screens with different sizes.
catern 11y ago
Well, no need to really look forward... You already have every one of those capabilities with Emacs. >you could put together anything from a simple test/editing environment to a full-blown IDE. People already do this with Emacs.
- andyl 11y ago
  Emacs is great and I know lots of people who love evil mode. I prefer vim because it comes pre-installed - good for ops. Many of my tools have embedded Lua, so it's great that I can exercise my Lua skills with Neovim. None of my other tools embeds elisp, so for me, elisp is a dead-end.
  - catern 11y ago
    Neovim won't be preinstalled for a long time. Possibly it never will be. Also, writing Elisp is not far from writing Guile Scheme, and there are many tools that embed Guile.

jbnicolai 11y ago

For those who are just getting started with tmux: I advise looking around others' .tmux.conf files for some sensible settings. Like Vim, Tmux ships with a lot of powerful features disabled by default. My absolute favorite has to be binding a hotkey to opening URLs in the current window [0]. See [1] for a small demo I just recorded. To get started, here's my current config: [1] [0]: https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L129 https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf#L12... [1]: http://recordit.co/vdxy09GpYG http://recordit.co/vdxy09GpYG [2]: https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf https://github.com/jbnicolai/tmux/blob/master/.tmux.conf

Jaepa 11y ago
You use ctl+s as your bind?
- jbnicolai 11y ago
  I do. It's closer to the prefix/leader I was used to when using screen (<C-a>), and I find it easier to type.
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    Why not use C-a?
    - GrandTheftR 11y ago
      I assume ctrl-s is easier to press than ctrl-a, I have trouble with ctrl-a on Mac with reconfigured CapsLock, and my bind key is ctrl-space.
      - Lio 11y ago
        That's why I remap the right alt key on mac (laptops) to ctrl. Having left right balanced ctrl keys is much more important for my workflow.
    - 11y ago

tomswartz07 11y ago

The release notes don't say: Is this a session-breaking update? I'd hate to run the update only to have it kill my current TMUX session. Devs - if you're reading this: PLEASE indicate if I could update without restarting the session.

sikhnerd 11y ago
Does not appear to be a session-breaking update. I just updated with no ill effects.
albemuth 11y ago
have you tried something like tmuxinator so create/restore sessions?
- zserge 11y ago
  May I suggest a more lightweight alternative for Tmux/Screen/DVTM sessions - http://zserge.com/blog/mucks2.html http://zserge.com/blog/mucks2.html ?
thomasadam 11y ago
Actually, I already provide this in the release notes. A PROTOCOL_VERSION bump means restarting tmux. We didn't do this between 1.9a -> 2.0, hence why it wasn't mentioned. Look at the release notes for 1.9, you'll see it was mentioned there. Simples.

funksta 11y ago

I don't see anything about it, so I'm assuming there's still no support for "true" (24 bit) colour? Would really love if they added that, since Neovim now supports it.

byaruhaf 11y ago

I'm excited by the improvements in the pane navigation. I'd have to try it out to get the feel of it but looks like an improvement.

agumonkey 11y ago

I use tmux all the time, but I've read about dtach/dvtm. http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/#why http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/#why Anyone using that instead ?

chriswarbo 11y ago
I'm using dvtm, after trying screen and tmux in the past. No particular reason other than it's Xmonad-like layout switching. It's crashed once, in a few months of usage. Make of that what you will.
- chriswarbo 11y ago
  Hmm, make that twice. Maybe I'll go back to tmux ;)
micampe 11y ago
I use dtach because detaching from the terminal is the only feature I would use in tmux.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  That was one argument I saw on an article, dvtm carries a simpler self-sufficient task and is far smaller than tmux. Separation of concerns etc.
farva 11y ago
Have a look at abduco as well. It's a (IMHO) more user-friendly (and supposedly cleaner) dtach replacement, from the author of dvtm.

possibilistic 11y ago

Does anyone else wish tmux were modal like vim, ie. without a "leader" key? My conf file has a ton of custom key bindings for window / pane management, and I'd love for them to go away or become simplified by simply dropping into a "window management mode". Likewise, I'd like the command mode to stay open until I close it. I have some scripted hacks to do this, but it's nowhere near what I'd expect from true modality. One of these days I guess I could get around to writing a patch. This single feature is probably my most wanted for any software at the moment.

jbnicolai 11y ago
Odd. I'd consider myself a 'power user', but I hardly ever find I have that need. Could you describe what you do when you're entering several command-mode lines in succession?
geoka9 11y ago
Maybe because I'm an emacs user, I find it pretty intuitive. As a ratpoison/conkeror/emacs/tmux user I often find myself juggling at least 4 sets of prefix keys. It works surprisingly well, I just made sure they are in different places on the keyboard, so that I don't mix them up.
Cushman 11y ago
Yes! Probably my biggest workflow pipe dream since getting some fluency in vim is to be able to drop into an "outside mode". I've cobbled something vaguely modal together for bspwm with abuse of shkd, so a lot of the binds map similarly, but like your solution it's far from ideal. As for "Why would you want this?" For me, the straightforward answer is "modes are modular". A core concept in vim is that your input can be thought of as a string describing the edit you wish to make, and modes help me keep that manageable in my head: I can first think about the mode I plan to enter, and then separately what I plan to do under the constraints of that mode. It's a little hard to explain, and I'm sure acolytes of other paradigms have their own philosophies, but it fits in really well to my workflow. It's a subtle thing in the limited world of text editing, but I definitely miss the semantics whenever I leave it, whether to a terminal or a browser or whatever. So for me, it comes down to wanting to bring the cost of task switching closer to what it is in the editor.

floatboth 11y ago

Still no true color support :-(

geoffharcourt 11y ago
It looks like the true color ticket on tmux was closed out: http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/140/ http://sourceforge.net/p/tmux/tickets/140/ I was applying this patch to 1.9 on my machine and it worked well: https://gist.github.com/JohnMorales/0579990993f6dec19e83 https://gist.github.com/JohnMorales/0579990993f6dec19e83 Haven't had a chance to see if the same diff can be applied to 2.0 yet.
- funksta 11y ago
  I tried the same patch on 1.9a but couldn't get it to work (tmux built fine but no dice with 24 bit colours). Very curious to hear if it works with 2.0.
nicm 11y ago
a couple of people have asked me about how true colour should look but none have sent code so far, it's not a very interesting feature to me so it'll need someone who cares about it to do it

xucheng 11y ago

This is still failing: bind-key -t vi-copy Y copy-end-of-line \; run-shell "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh -c 'tmux save-buffer - | pbcopy'"

andrewstuart2 11y ago

Holy moley, I knew there were 24 function keys at one point, but 63? That's crazy! I love learning little things like that. I'm definitely glad modifier+key shortcuts are so common. I like it when shortcuts can be somewhat mnemonic (and I love vim).

zatkin 11y ago

>CHANGES FROM 1.9a to 2.0 6 March 2015 I think they meant 6 May 2015?

nickysielicki 11y ago

Why should I use tmux over screen? Why do I use screen over tmux?: - its old. A stable version is on every distro. Trying to start a screen session is more likely to succeed on any given box than a tmux session. I see my friends wrestle with their tmux setup being more recent on one box than another and their nested sessions get screwed up. I never have any issue. - I know it, and for my simple use it does everything perfectly. I can split panes, I can detach and come back, I can nest sessions. - screen can attach to serial terminals. What's the killer feature of tmux that I'm missing out on?

evol262 11y ago
It's maintainable, modern code, which screen is not. Screen is not dead yet, but it eventually will be.
- Peaker 11y ago
  He didn't ask which one is nicer to hack on.
  - ChristianBundy 11y ago
    No, they asked "Why should I use tmux over screen?", which the answer was relevant to.
    - Peaker 11y ago
      Doesn't seem that way to me at all.
exDM69 11y ago
Not sure if it works in GNU Screen but tmux can be controlled from the command line. Examples: tmux show-buffer | vipe | bash - tmux send-keys -t debugger run This allows nice ad hoc scripts that are composable in a very Unix-y way.
perlgeek 11y ago
I use both, and enjoy that they have different control keys by default, so I can nest them painlessly without need for any configuration. Also, tmux works out-of-the-box for accounts that you su'ed into, something I never managed with screen.

ethagnawl 11y ago

Does anyone have Tmux 2.0 working alongside Tmuxinator? I know the project only claims support for 1.8, but I've been using it alongside 1.9 (mostly without issue) for many months.

cm3 11y ago

Does tmux still have no flow control? Just compare how tmux locks up when you `tar xfv linux-4.0.tar.xz` and screen doesn't. None of the knobs to control output throttling helped. How do you get around this problem?

chirayuk 11y ago
I run `stty -ixon -ixoff` once and that fixes the issue for me.
- cm3 11y ago
  That's a different flow control than what I'm talking about. tmux is just overwhelmed and cannot keep up with the output from tar whereas screen takes care of it and still responds to user input. Frankly I'm amazed there's only one or two posts about this on the internet as there's more than the pathological linux tarball extract where this problem will lock up tmux.
  - nicm 11y ago
    yes, this sucks but i have never myself been able to find a reliable case where screen reacts any better than tmux (for example, both behave similarly with yes(1)) the c0-* stuff is poor (i'm tempted to remove it) but it is not an easy problem to solve, people want tmux to be fast, except when they don't. it's also tricky remotely where ssh and the network stack are buffering too

cm3 11y ago

I wish it was possible to have screen-like bindings that don't require explicitly defining them all so that you don't have to unpress Ctrl each time. In screen you can press C-a c quickly but for that to work in tmux you have to add this: bind-key C-c new-window

MikeKusold 11y ago
Is line 2 what you are looking for? https://github.com/kusold/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux.conf#L2 https://github.com/kusold/dotfiles/blob/master/tmux.conf#L2 I just tried it out, and `C-a c` created a new windows for me.
- cm3 11y ago
  Tried that before and with 2.0 but it doesn't work. You still have to release both 'Ctrl' and 'a' before pressing 'c'. In screen you don't have to and chaining works comfortably.
scottjad 11y ago
> In screen you can press C-a c quickly Screen just binds C-a c and C-a C-c to the same command, for some values of c.

morenoh149 11y ago

brew install tmux to install on osx. If you already had tmux brew unlink tmux; brew install tmux

wyclif 11y ago
Yes, without unlinking, some people are probably going to experience this effect: >brew install tmux Warning: tmux-1.9a already installed Then again: >brew unlink tmux Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/tmux/1.9a... 4 symlinks removed >brew install tmux Warning: tmux-1.9a already installed, it's just not linked

luxpir 11y ago

Anyone else slightly disappointed that connecting to a tmux session with mosh breaks mouse-mode? That fixed, plus session restore, would be the dream.

nicm 11y ago
i suspect you need to talk to the mosh guys for this
- luxpir 11y ago
  True enough. The session restore still stands. I know tmuxinator exists, but as a personal preference I'd prefer it in-built/native. Also to save state, which I'd expect is asking too much.
  - nicm 11y ago
    what do you mean session restore? we could restore the basic layout of sessions, windows, panes but we couldn't restore what was run in them (and it would be dangerous to try)

creack 11y ago

This new release breaks emacs' cursor with iTerm2 :(. Works fine with tmux + Terminal or iTerm2 without tmux though.

pan69 11y ago

I've only recently discovered tmux (feels ashamed). It's fantastic. The only thing I miss is just a sprinkle of mouse interaction. Moving around with the keys is easy enough of course but if you have a terminal in an otherwise desktop environment, it would be really nice to just be able to "click" in a pane to focus it.

skeuomorf 11y ago
If you really want this, you should use a tiling window manager and use "focus follows cursor" or "focus on click".
alaskamiller 11y ago
Learned Tmux a few weeks ago and use it every day now. You can enable Mouse Mode, on Macs you can install extra Tmux features, and iTerm2 has mouse mode built in.
thristian 11y ago
Put "mouse-select-pane on" in .tmux.conf. If you check the tmux manpage and search for 'mouse', there's a whole bunch of mouse-enabling options; you might as well turn them all on -- except for "mouse-utf8", which is a compatibility option that can potentially screw things up. The downside to enabling mouse support in tmux is that it disables mouse support in the outer terminal (the one tmux is running inside). If you select text in tmux, it will go to the tmux clipboard instead of your system clipboard. You can get around that by holding shift before selecting text, but some people get annoyed by the extra action required.
_cudgel 11y ago
Try these options: set-option -g mode-mouse on set-option -g mouse-resize-pane on set-option -g mouse-select-pane on set-option -g mouse-select-window on

vhost- 11y ago

This is great news! But I've started to use Tmux less after being REALLY into it. I've slowly replaced it with a tiling window manager because I've noticed my ncurses and curses programs don't draw right in Tmux. I've found a couple work arounds, like using the TERM env var, but it doesn't work for everything. I'm wondering how others have solved this problem, if they have at all.

greggyb 11y ago
I run into the opposite. St doesn't play well with n/curses in my experience (mostly corrupt characters on display), and the easiest solution I've seen is to run these programs in a Tmux session. I use Tmux all the time anyway, so this doesn't add any extra overhead for me (mental or system).

coned88 11y ago

I really want tmux or screen to just scroll when I mouse wheel up or press the up arrow on the selected window. I don't like having togo into copy mode.

smileart 11y ago
What's wrong with `setw -g mode-mouse on`? Or I simply didn't understand the point.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

freedevbootcamp 11y ago

Congrats to the Tmux team for a great open source tool. Its sad that HN decided to take this moment to talk about sourceforge and not the product announcement.

wldcordeiro 11y ago
It's a tool I use daily, I love Tmux!
bluehex 11y ago
Yes, I'm also a huge fan! I'm sorry for the derailment. I probably should have put it in a separate post.