It seems like everywhere I turn lately, I run into tmux.
Nick, Josh, Harold, and Goose are running their editor+shell combos inside of tmux on a daily basis. When I wanted to know more about remote pair programming with ssh, vim, and GNU screen, Stephen Caudill’s awesome article suggested tmux was superior to screen. Then, Bryan Liles recorded a tmux screencast.
I’m always down for a ride on a bandwagon, so I’m giving tmux a shot. I’ve rarely used GNU screen so this is not a comparison between two similar tools. I’m evaluating a tool many of my peers are using.
These are the questions I’ve had so far.
“[Terminal tabs]: that’s not awesome.” - Bryan Liles.
I like the idea of having one shell for my whole development environment that I fly around inside like a Tasmanian devil.
I want speed and focus.
I went with Bryan’s suggestion and downloaded iTerm 2. While I’m still on the fence about tmux, iTerm 2 is definitely an improvement and I recommend it without reservation.
Then I installed tmux, read the documentation, and fired it up.
brew install tmux
man tmux
tmux -u
In my opinion, no. Anti-aliasing and 256 colors is the state of the art here. If I wanted a beautiful-looking editor, I’d still be using Textmate. I’m willing to trade off looks for speed. I know people who are very fast in other editors. I feel my ceiling for speed is higher in vim.
Josh tells me you can make some good-looking vim schemes with Palette that will be automatically converted to 256 colors. We’ll see.
This was non-obvious to me. You enter “copy mode” using prefix+[, then use vim bindings to move up (Ctrl+b, j, k, etc.).
There’s a noticeable delay in the editor that doesn’t exist in MacVim. I haven’t figured out why yet. I suspect it might actually be iTerm 2.
Enter “copy mode” using prefix+[, use vim bindings to move, select with space, copy with enter. This will let you copy and paste within tmux.
The bigger issue is copying text from within tmux and pasting it elsewhere. The very latest Homebrew formula has a patch to fix a pboard problem with copying in Mac OS X. It mostly works.
Most common amongst thoughtbot folks and blog posts is to make tmux act more like vim and GNU screen.
# act like vim
setw -g mode-keys vi
bind h select-pane -L
bind j select-pane -D
bind k select-pane -U
bind l select-pane -R
bind-key -r C-h select-window -t :-
bind-key -r C-l select-window -t :+
# act like GNU screen
unbind C-b
set -g prefix C-a
# look good
set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"
One day I might work on Hoptoad. Another day, a client project. I’d like to name my tmux sessions so I can leave one, drop into another, and go back to the original with all my state maintained (files still open in my editor, console/logs I want open, etc.).
tmux new -s hoptoad
# hack, leave, do something else
tmux attach -t hoptoad
This is my favorite feature so far.
This is a big selling point of tmux but I’m not convinced. Contrast the following with Command+Tab or using your mouse to move and click. In terms of speed, it’s probably six or one half dozen.
Using vim and GNU screen bindings:
Ctrl+a c # create a new window
Ctrl+a , # name the window (test, vim, console, log, etc.)
Ctrl+a " # split pane horizontally
Ctrl+a % # split pane vertically
Ctrl+a j (or k) # move up or down a pane
Ctrl+a h (or l) # move left or right a pane
Ctrl+a x # kill a pane or window
I believe in the philosophy of setting my mouse free but the reality is takes time for muscle memory to make this fast and the savings might not really be significant.
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with tmux in my first week using it, but the brief moments of flow I’ve experienced so far are enough to keep trying it.
Give tmux a shot and if you have any other tips, I’d love to hear them.
