Awesome

awesome-termgrp

awesome-termgrp is a plugin for Awesome window manager. It tries to solve the problem of using tmux inside a tiling window manager. That is, let tmux manages sessions and let AwesomeWM manages window layout.

Motivation

I always find it is uncomfortable to use tmux inside a tiling window manger. It's frustrated and tired to think what key should I press before jumping to another window. There are some discussions on reddit like this and this, and there are some in Hacker News too. It seems redundant to make two programs handle same thing. However, tmux has its usage. It can group up terminals to form sessions, which is useful to manager projects. And it offers scrollback buffer feature for simple terminal emulators like st.

Screenshot

How does it work?

It uses the concept of session and window group in tmux. Sessions with same window group can let users have different view of the same set of windows. A group in awesome-termgrp is a window group in tmux.

awesome-termgrp uses its own server socket (tmux -L awesome-termgrp) and applies some additional tmux setting using session variables. It will still load ~/.tmux.conf, but you can add other tmux settings for termgrp without modifing it.

Installation

awesome-termgrp has been developed under Awesome v4.1+. It might be broken on previous versions.

Create a subdirectory termgrp in your awesome config directory, e.g.

cd ~/.config/awesome
git clone https://github.com/wheatdog/awesome-termgrp termgrp

Then, include this plugin from your config file (~/.config/awesome/rc.lua)

local termgrp = require('termgrp')

How to use?

Optional Configuration

You can configure default setting after loading termgrp

termgrp.terminal = "urxvt"
termgrp.dmenu = "dmenu"

If you want to make new windown start with the same directory of the current one, You may need to add following line to your initialization file.

In ~/.bashrc if your are using bash,

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;$PWD\007"'

Or you could modify termgrp.group_manager_built_in.tmux.pattern_title.

Keybindings

You can modify following keybindings and add them to globalkeys,

-- Create a new termgrp
-- Like tmux new-session
awful.key({ modkey,           }, "=", function() termgrp.action.create("-p \"create termgroup (don't use following names): \"") end),

-- Detach a termgrp
-- Like tmux detach-client
awful.key({ modkey, "Shift"   }, "=", function() termgrp.action.detach("-p \"detach termgroup: \"") end),

-- Attach a termgrp
-- Like tmux attach-session
awful.key({ modkey, "Ctrl"    }, "=", function() termgrp.action.attach("-p \"attach termgroup: \"") end),

-- If user focuses on a window of a termgrp, launch a terminal in the same termgrp.
-- Otherwise, launch a normal terminal.
-- Like tmux new-window
awful.key({ modkey, "Shift" }, "Return", function() termgrp.action.spawn() end,
    {description = "open a terminal", group = "launcher"}),

-- If user focuses on a window of a termgrp, launch a terminal app in the same termgrp.
-- Otherwise, launch a normal terminal app.
-- Like tmux new-window app
app = "ranger"
awful.key({ modkey }, "r", function() termgrp.action.spawn(app) end,
    {description = "open file manager", group = "launcher"}),

You can modify following keybindings and add them to clientkeys,

-- Like tmux kill-window
awful.key({ modkey, "Shift"   }, "c", function (c) termgrp.action.kill(c) end,
        {description = "close", group = "client"}),

Tips

Why it doesn't close window properly after typing exit?

You may want to overwrite exit inside the initialization file of your desired shell. e.g. If you are using bash, add following codes into ~/.bashrc

function exit() {
    if [ -n "$TMUX" ] && [ "$(basename $(echo $TMUX | cut -d, -f1))" = "awesome-termgrp" ]; then
        if [ $(tmux list-window | wc -l) -gt 1 ]; then
            tmux kill-window \; kill-session
        else
            tmux kill-window 
        fi
    else
        builtin exit
    fi
}

Acknowledgement

Thank Rudis Muiznieks for his blog post - Using Tmux with a Single Global Session

Thank chakrit for his inspiring gist - TMUX - Single window group, multiple session

Future Work

Comment codes to make others easier to configure settings.

Make termgrp.action.create foolproof.

Figure out a better way to make Awesome understanding what tmux window/session it currently focuses on other than parsing window's title

Support different terminal session managers like screen or abduco.