A while ago I wrote a little tool to help me in managing my project workspaces which I do with tmux. Basically I create different tmux sessions for every project and spawn the necessary windows in order to quickly get me back on track.

Using muxy, I can simply describe my setups for different projects and basically load a project by typing load¹.

Project File

Muxy loads a project by sourcing the base, followed by a up script. These scripts are located in a project directory within the $MUXY_PATH/projects directory. In case a project is named hackathon one would find it’s project directory at the $MUXY_PATH/projects/hackathon path.

The base file named base.bash in my case simple defines some variables.

NAME="hackathon"
SESSION="hack"
BASE="/path/to/workdir/hack"

The up.bash file specifies the steps that need to be taken in setting up the workspace.

# up file

# start tmux if not already running
tmux start-session

# create new session, with a window named `base` where $BASE is the pwd
tmux new-window -c $BASE -d -s $SESSION -n base

# set env variables for this project
tmux setenv -t $SESSION $BASE
tmux setenv -t $SESSION SESSION_STARTUP_SCRIPT "/Users/david/Documents/Development/TMH/startup.zsh"
tmux setenv -t $SESSION AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE "tmh"

# run some commands in the `base` window
# C-m is equivalent to pressing ente
tmux send-keys -t $SESSION:0 "ls -la" C-m
# split `base` window into two panes
tmux split-window -h -t $SESSION:0
# enter notes directory in second pane
tmux send-keys -t $SESSION:0 "cd $BASE/notes" C-m

# create new window called `concept`
tmux new-window -t $SESSION:1 -n concept

tmux attach-session -t $SESSION

Leveraging Indexes

Note how $SESSION:N is used to create a window at the given index. Generally one may use just the session name as the target as in

tmux new-window -t $SESSION -n blah

where tmux will automatically increment the index number for you, however; there may be situations where you predict you may need to add new windows on the fly while at work, but want to maintain order to some extent.

Imagine starting a project with the following panes

• base, indexed 0
  • 1st pane where we git log --oneline --graph --all --decorate
  • 2nd pane where we less README.md
• code where we edit code, indexed 1
• tests where tests are run on code change, indexed 2

Mostly we expect to edit all code in the single code pane. We’ll be using vim which allows us to do elegant splits of all sorts in order to look at multiple files. We decide, however; that we only want to look at code from a single repository in a given tmux window, everytime we need to look at the code of a dependency for instance, we’ll have to open a different window and view the code there. That way we keep our workflow slightly organized :wink:. Upon creating that new window to view code, it is appended to the end of our pane list as such base, code, tests, dep1. Maybe we just want to keep the tests at the end of a list of code windows that all relate to it which is possible by creating the tests window with higher index for example 5 instead of 2 would allow us to open 3 windows before the tests window.

Personally I just use indexes 0 through 9 because switching is somewhat easier².

Sometimes it may be convenient to create

Different Environment Variables for Projects

In order to properly deal with environment variables in tmux sessions, I would highly recommend the use of the tmux set-environment and tmux update-environment commands. The set and update environment commands could for instance be used in the up-files for a project to set the $AWS_DEFAULT_PROFILE variable for a devops user. That way one could just use the aws cli from any tmux session whilst knowing that the correct profile has been selected :wink:.

Links

• Terminal Multiplexers: Screen, Tmux