TMUXIFY

tmuxify is a bash tool inspired in tmuxinator. The big difference is that it doesn't need Ruby.

TL;DR

Fire up tmux with all the windows, panes and commands you need to start hacking at once! You will need to create a .tmuxify.layout file in the root of your project and run tmuxify.

The .tmuxify.layout file

Each line of this file tells tmuxify what to run, in what window and pane. It uses the following format

window-name pane-number command

Yes, separated by a single space. Everything after the pane-number will be treated as part of the command.

Say I need two windows, one for git and one for vim, then my .tmuxify.layout file would look like:

git 1 git pull
vim 1 vim

Now I want the git window to have a pane with a rack server running.

git 1 git pull
git 2 rackup -p 8080
vim 1 vim

Get the idea? Go crazy.

You can also select which pane will have focus after attaching the session by adding a * after the pane-number

git 1* git pull
git 2 rackup -p 8080
vim 1 vim

Files

tmuxify looks for a layout file in the current directory. If none is found it will default to ~/.tmuxify.layout.

Caveats

1. The .tmuxify.layout file will need a pane-number even if the window has only one, like the vim example up there.

2. All the commands will cd to the directory where the .tmuxify.layout file is in.

3. The pane layout is always tiled.

4. The specified window names in the layout create new windows, so the first one is never used. Closing the first window will not renumber the existing ones. To fix that, add the following option in ~/.tmux.conf

    set-option -g renumber-windows on
   

Installation

With Homebrew

brew tap tonchis/goodies && brew install tmuxify

Or standalone. Here's a oneliner.

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tonchis/tmuxify/v1.2.1/bin/tmuxify && chmod +x tmuxify && sudo mv tmuxify /usr/local/bin

You can pass options to tmux with the TMUX_OPTS environment variable if you need.

Why?

I love tmux and the automation that tmuxinator offers to speed up my development, yet I find that needing Ruby and YAML is a bit cumbersome, given the powerful CLI tools that tmux offers.

Thanks

To inkel and djanowski for all their feedback :D