Description

tmenu is a dynamic menu for tty devices, which reads a list of newline-separated items from stdin. When the user selects an item and presses Return, the selected item is printed to stdout. Entering text will narrow the list of items to items that contain the entered text.

Non/Features

• written in (almost POSIX conforming) C99
• emacs-like key bindings
• does not use ncurses

tmenu is almost conforming to POSIX.1-2008. The only non-standard functionality currently used is:

• the TIOCGWINSZ constant as request parameter when calling ioctl. This constant seems to be the least invasive deviation from the standard to query the current size of the terminal.

• the SIGWINCH constant as sig parameter when calling signal. It is used for listening to resize events of the terminal window. The existence of SIGWINCH is not required by the standard. See <signal.h>.

Installation

make
sudo make install

make install installs to /usr/local by default. If you want to install tmenu to a different location, set PREFIX:

make install PREFIX=$HOME/local

If you want to change compilation and linking flags, modify script/compile and script/link. Having the options in separate files causes make to recompile the program if options change.

Options

• -l LINES: Set the height of the completion list in lines to LINES. Defaults to 3.
• -p PROMPT: Set the prompt shown to the user to PROMPT. Defaults to >>.
• -q: Be quiet. When quiet, no status line is displayed. Defaults to showing the status line.

Key Bindings

• Return, C-j: Output the currently selected item on stdout and exit.
• C-n: Select the next item in the list.
• C-p: Select the previous item in the list.
• C-a: Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.
• C-e: Move the cursor to the end of the line.
• C-u: Delete text until the beginning of the line.
• C-k: Delete text until the end of the line.
• C-d: Delete the character under the cursor.
• Backspace: Delete the character before the cursor.
• C-f: Move the cursor forward by one character.
• C-b: Move the cursor backward by one character.

Uses

Switch git branches

Add an git alias with the following command to switch git branches using tmenu:

git alias br "!git ls-remote -h . | awk '{print(substr($NF, 12))}' | tmenu | xargs git checkout"

Then use git br to interactively switch the git branch.

Switching between background jobs in the shell

Most shells support job control (suspending tasks by pressing C-z, resuming it later using the fg command). The following shell function overrides the fg builtin to interactively select the job to resume.

Note: This does not work when dash, or bash in POSIX mode, is used. In these cases jobs is executed in a subshell, always reporting no jobs. See this bug.

fg() {
  command fg %$(jobs | tmenu | xargs -I% expr match % '\[\([[:digit:]]\+\)\]')
}

Edit file in current git repository

The following shell command install git edit as an alias for selecting a file from the current git repository and opening it with $EDITOR.

git alias edit '!$EDITOR "$(git ls-files | tmenu)"'

Managing per-project settings

If you are frequently working on different projects, it can be useful to maintain different settings for your shell based on the project you are in. Add the following to $HOME/.${SHELL}rc:

if [ -e ./.projectile.sh ]; then
    . ./.projectile.sh
fi

When a new shell is started, it executes the contents of .projectile.sh in the current directory (if such a file exists).

Switching a project can then be done using the following shell function:

projectile() {
    PROJECTILE=${PROJECTILE:-$HOME/projects}
    (cd $PROJECTILE/$(printf "%s\n" $PROJECTILE/* |
          xargs -L 1 basename |
          tmenu)
     $SHELL)
}

Set PROJECTILE to the directory containing your projects (default: $HOME/projects), then switch to a project using the projectile command. Place .projectile.sh files with the project specific shell settings into the project directories. Things that might be interesting to do:

• PATH to contain the bin or script directory of the current project. This makes it easy to override certain shell commands.

• Use .projectile.sh to set the version of the runtime used for the project (e.g. using chruby or virtualenv for Python).

• Change the prompt to highlight that you are working on a specific project now.

• Setup a project-specific tmux configuration

License

Copyright 2014-2016 Dario Hamidi

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.