Ritesh Nadhani

One terminal to rule them all - for the power users

June 28, 2012

Couple of weeks back, while researching on completely unrelated topic, I came across various blog/references espousing the effectiveness of working on command line. Over years, I have noticed and have been fascinated by many who have absolutely fantastic in getting their job done from the command line. For as long as I remember, I have been thinking of moving to similar workflow but due to one reason or another, never took the effort to spend time to set it up.

Workflow

Problems

Overtime, I tried using tools specific to things like Twitter, Facebook but the hassle of learning another tool, dealing with Adobe Air updates just made the whole process painful. Couple with that Mac updates needing restart, I would have to reopen everything again. Yes, there are ways/tools to set the apps that have to started etc. but overtime they are just hassle to maintain. I spent some time learning Quicksilver when I got my first Mac during college but since I had to move to use Linux almost exclusively, I never got the chance to master it.

I still have vivid memories of my number of attempts of getting my config files into code repository with varying level of success. With each app keeping configs in their own way - maintaining a GIT version is almost always impossible.

Last but not least, doing Alt-Tab to browse between myriad of apps plus the keys to jump to each applications window/buffer takes time.

Setup

After reading over various setups, basically the setup boiled down to:

Personally, I like to have the same color scheme across all my apps but different people may have different likings. I use zenburn everywhere (there are themes for iTerm/various terminals/vim) but people have been reviewing solarized/tomorrow a lot.

Use your favorite package manager to install the above applications. Needless, to say - it is given that you setup all of your dotconf into a code repository. 1000s of people have released their dotconf files on the internet. Its very interesting read through and see how people work. I would say 80% of things in my conf are picked up from others.

It is important that you setup your terminal colortheme. Just setting up your editor or other app themes will not work.

NOTE: In this post, I would explain some of the issues that I faced while having the setup on my Mac. Most of them was because of iTerm behaves and default function keys of Mac. You may or may not have these issues.

Common buffer/window/pane movement

a.k.a - how I like to move around

As you would notice after getting using all the apps, there is a notion of splitting the main view window into sub windows. iTerm/tmux calls it windows/panes, vim has its windows which you can split, weechat with its windows etc. Its easy if you setup a common pattern in moving between them. An important thing to remember is to choose different keystrokes so that one app does not eat other apps key strokes. After long trial and error, I use the following keybindings for my window/pane movement.

"iTerm
"Lot of command line apps do not recognise the Mac `cmd` so it helps
"to use them for Cocoa apps.
Cmd-},{ - Move focus. I rarely jump to a specific window. Its just easier to
press the key couple of times more.

"vim
The standard Ctrl+W keys. Its just not difficult.

"tmux - try to map the vim movement commands
<prefix>h,j,k,l - left, down, top, right

"weechat
"It really helps to read through: http://www.weechat.org/files/doc/devel/weechat_quickstart.en.html
<ctrl>h,j,k,l - left, down, top, right

My workflow

Alright, the result. This is what am using these days:

If I am working on backend project or something which does not involve constant look up of browser. I like to use the full screen mode of iTerm. When I go home, I just detach my tmux session and start the same from home machine. And everything is as where I left. No need to reopen things in the browser, no need to worry about restarts. Sometimes, when I do need to restart the machine or session, I can get back up and running with scripts like:

tmux start-server
tmux new-session -d -s personal -n mutt
tmux new-window -t personal:2 -n chat
tmux new-window -t personal:3 -n news
tmux new-window -t personal:4 -n bitlbee
tmux new-window -t personal:5 -n blog

tmux send-keys -t personal:1 'mutt' C-m
tmux send-keys -t personal:4 'bitlbee -D -n -v' C-m
tmux send-keys -t personal:2 'weechat-curses -a' C-m
tmux send-keys -t personal:3 'newsbeuter' C-m
tmux send-keys -t personal:5 'blog; tmux split-window -h; cmus' C-m

tmux select-window -t personal:1
tmux attach-session -d -t personal

Shifting between various window is just a matter of right combination of keyboard movements. They may seem daunting but you will be amazed how powerful our brain is to grasp new stuff with enough training. I have been using this setup for just two weeks and I seem to recall most of the commands on instinct.

I hear you say “Pictures are worth thousand words”.

Edit: Added images on 2012-07-05 @ 13:32PST.

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