tmux Notes

Contents

• Gotchas
  • truecolor support
• General Notes
• General tmux Usage
• Useful Links
• TODOs

Gotchas

Gotchas truecolor support

🚨 Getting truecolor 24 bit color support working in tmux is a total pain the ass.

⚠️ The tmux server MUST be restarted when adjusting the below settings. Reloading the configuration is not enough!

Add the below lines to the tmux.conf file to get truecolor working. 🤞

set -g default-terminal "xterm-256color"
set-option -ga terminal-overrides ",xterm-256color:Tc"

Neovim will whine 😭 about the terminal being explicitly set to xterm-256color

screen256-color handles italic font a little better within tmux as opposed to using xterm-256color but truecolor support is lost when setting tmux TERM to screen256-color within tmux.

Gotchas italic font support

To get italic font working within tmux, click here

The terminal emulator iTerm etc must be able to support italic font.

To add an italic terminfo entry for a particular user

mkdir ~/.terminfo

xterm-256color-italic|xterm with 256 colors and italic,
  sitm=\E[3m, ritm=\E[23m,
  use=xterm-256color,

pbpaste > $dots/terms/tmux/xterm-256color-italic.terminfo

tmux-256color|tmux with 256 colors,
  ritm=\E[23m, rmso=\E[27m, sitm=\E[3m, smso=\E[7m, Ms@,
  khome=\E[1~, kend=\E[4~,
  use=xterm-256color, use=screen-256color,

pbpaste > $dots/terms/tmux/tmux-256color.terminfo

tic -x -o ~/.terminfo $dots/terms/tmux/xterm-256color.terminfo
tic -x -o ~/.terminfo $dots/terms/tmux/tmux-256color.terminfo

tmux.conf

set -g default-terminal 'tmux-256color'
set -as terminal-overrides ',xterm*:Tc'

And finally for the icing on the 🎂

.vimrc

highlight Comment gui=italic
let &t_8f="\<Esc>[38;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
let &t_8b="\<Esc>[48;2;%lu;%lu;%lum"
set termguicolors

General Notes

tmux is short for terminal multiplexer

• By default all tmux key bindings will require a prefix key sequence before they are active. The prefix is initially set as control+b

• tmux can be used for a paired programming session, ie. two people can login to the same tmux session and edit the same files.

General tmux Usage

To start a new tmux session with a particular name

tmux new-session -s [session_name]

or

tmux new -s [session-name]

To create a new tmux session in a detached

tmux new -s [session-name] -d

To list all the tmux commands

tmux list-commands

To list all the current key-bindings

tmux list-keys

To list available tmux sessions

tmux list-sessions

or

tmux ls

To display a list of sessions known to the local box

<kbd>prefix</kbd> then <kbd>s</kbd>

To attach to a tmux session using its name

tmux attach -t [session-name]

To kill a tmux session using its name

tmux kill-session -t [session-name]

To cycle through various pane layouts in tmux

prefix refers to pressing control + whatever key you have assigned ie. in my situation it would be control + s

prefix then spacebar

To detach from a tmux session
prefix + d

To get a list of all keybindings and associated commands that trigger these bindings prefix + ?

When using the -r flag in conjunction with the bind keyword in the .tmux.conf file it allows one to repeat a command without having to repeatedly input the prefix

To get scroll back history when using tmux with iTerm2, see 💳

Working with Windows

To rename a tmux window prefix+,

Working with Panes

To maximize a pane within a tmux window prefix + z

To restore the pane to the previous size prefix + z

Pair Programmming with tmux

1. The first user on the system can start a tmux session

tmux new-session -s apples-and-oranges

2. The second user on the system can connect to the existing session

tmux new-session -t apples-and-oranges -s user2session

Useful Links 🔗

• How to fix mouse breakage in tmux
• hackernoon.com - Gentle Intro to tmux

TODOs

• Read the following article about using shared clipboard to solve issues with cross system copy / paste.
• figure out starting a interactive fish shell session within tmux, the $fish_users_paths are duplicating.