Chapter 3 : Scripting Customized Tmux Environments¶

-t switch is very useful and can be utlised to streamline our setup of development environment.

• Create a new named session : tmux new-session -s development -d
• Create a split window without attaching : tmux split-window -h -t development
• Attach to session : tmux a -t development
• Attach more splits to window : tmux split-window -v -t development

Scripting a Project Configuration¶

Create a script ~/dev (make sure its executable) and a directory : ~/devproject

• Create the session : tmux new-session -s development -n editor -d
• Add a line to our configuration using send-keys : tmux send-keys -t development 'cd ~/devproject' C-m

# create a new-session
tmux new-session -s development -n editor -d

# using send-keys to change cwd
# notice CTRL-m is the way to send <CR> thru sendkey
tmux send-keys -t development 'cd ~/devproject' C-m

# open vim
tmux send-keys -t development 'vim' C-m

# lets split window
# -p %x : to split in x%
tmux split-window -v -t development

# select main-horizontal layout from defaults
tmux select-layout -t development main-horizontal

Targeting Specific Panes¶

• Remember our base index in 1 for everything now.
• We can target a pane using [session]:[window].[pane]
• So to target pane 2 : development:1.2

Creating and Selecting Windows

# create a new console pane
tmux new-window -n console -t development
tmux send-keys -t development:2 'cd ~/devproject' C-m

# starting up attached to that window
tmux select-window -t development:1
tmux a -t development

Combine both files and try them out. One issue is it creates duplicate sessions , to avoid that use following construct

tmux has-session -t development
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
    # normal script ^ as above
fil
tmux a -t development

Using tmux Configuration for Setup¶

Create a conf file for tmux to start in named app.conf

source-file ~/.tmux.conf
# see no need to prefix tmux since its not a bash script
new-session -s development -n editor -d
...

Then start tmux as : tmux -f app.conf attach

Managing Configuration with tmuxinator¶

tmuxinator is a simple tool you can use to define and manage different tmux-configuration. Window-layout and commands in tmux can be defined in yaml format.

Installing using Rubygems

gem install tmuxinator

tmuxinator need $EDITOR variable, make sure its available.

To create a new tmuxinator project : tmuxinator open development

Create/Edit the Ruby rails config to this config

name: development
root: ~/development
windows:
  - editor:
        layout: main-horizontal
        panes:
            - vim
            -   # empty, will just run plain bash
  - console: # empty

Save and execute : tmuxinator development

You could also use :tmuxinator debug development to print actual srcipt being generator by program from yaml.