Goodbye Screen, My Old Friend

Around four years ago when joining a new firm, like many devs out there I had to spend most of a day setting up my new machine. It was then that I read a post about this tool, GNU Screen. It's a terminal multiplexer, but of course you already knew that. Well, during the days, weeks, and months that followed, Screen and I became good friends. Eventually, I even got Screen to perform new tricks. But, after four years, I'm saying goodbye.

This past month I've been using tmux, another multiplexer that's fast gaining popularity. To be honest, at first I wasn't convinced. It was like Screen, but with added complication (Obviously I forgot the many hours I've spent tweaking my .screenrc file). But very quickly, tmux has grown on me. It's easily configured and comes with vertical split and a status line out of the box. Probably the feature I like most is its predefined layouts which conveniently for me, include the layout I would always initially construct in Screen.

Sessions, Windows, & Panes

tmux works in a world of sessions, windows, & panes that are managed by the single server. When a tmux client connects to the server, a session is created that contains a single window. The window can be divided up into rectangular panes, each one of them a pseudo terminal. It's also possible to have multiple sessions that each contain multiple windows, all under a single tmux server.

Usefully, a tmux client can be detached from the server, whilst the session is persisted and continues to run in the background. The session can then be reattached at some later point. A good use case for this would be to keep a long running process alive or returning to a development environment that's ready to rock.

The next steps show how I got started with tmux. Please let me know if something doesn't work for you. Better still, improve my config.

Installation (OSX)

$ brew install tmux
$ tmux -V
# tmux 1.8

Configuration

My up to date tmux configuration can be found within the relevant folder of my dotfiles (tmux uses the dotfile .tmux.conf). There's little value in going over lots of configuration when tmux's man page covers it all. Right now, these are a few of the settings I found useful when I initially made the switch from Screen.

I tried using tmux's default prefix key mapping ctrl-b for a couple of days but it didn't stick. So I binded the prefix to ctrl-a, replicating the behaviour of Screen.

# ~/.tmux.conf


# Remap prefix key to Ctrl-a
unbind-key C-b
set -g prefix C-a

Binding ctrl-a to the tmux prefix key breaks "jump to start of line". Fix it (kind of) - hitting a again after the tmux prefix jumps to start of line:

# ~/.tmux.conf


# Fix jump to end of line
bind-key a send-prefix

Bind vertical split to |. Again, I've used Screen's binding. To me this makes a lot of sense as tmux uses " for horizontal split, placing the two split keys next to each other.

# ~/.tmux.conf


# Remap vertical split
unbind-key %
bind-key | split-window -h

Usage

Performing the next set of commands covers tmux's most basic workflow. In my case, tmux: is the tmux prefix that is equivalent to ctrl-a. If you've not modified the default tmux prefix key binding, tmux: is equivalent to ctrl-b. Here we go:

Start tmux:

$ tmux

tmux manipulation:

# Give the session a name:
$ tmux: $


# Set the default folder for the session. This has the effect that new panes will open with this folder:
$ tmux set default-path ~/Sites
# or
$ cd ~/Sites && tmux set default-path $(pwd)

# Create a vertical split (creates a new pane):
$ tmux: |

# Create a horizontal split (creates a new pane):
$ tmux: "

Switch to the next pane

$ tmux: o

Switch to a pane using the arrow keys

$ tmux: Left
$ tmux: Right
$ tmux: Up
$ tmux: Down

My favourite, cycle through predefined layouts

$ tmux: Space

Zoom the current pane. Fills the terminal window. Hit it again to zoom out:

$ tmux: z

Kill the current pane

$ tmux: x

And probably most importantly, detach:

$ tmux: d

And then to reattach:

$ tmux attach