I’ve been using a helper script to manage all of my tmux sessions for the last few months (nearly since the time I switched from screen to tmux).

A tmuxinator alternative

I use a separate session for each project I work on and I wanted a way to easily connect to project sessions with the same default windows and environment variables each time. I tried using tmuxinator, but I found it to be too complicated for my needs. I had trouble working within the limitations of the yaml files and I found the installation to be overly complicated (especially when working on a new server that didn’t have ruby installed). After I realized how simple it would be to solve my own problem I made the tmuxstart script.

Now available on Github

While updating my dotfiles repository I realized I hadn’t yet incorporated my tmuxstart workflow into my .tmux.conf file. Yesterday I decided to make README and LICENSE files for my script and put it under version control. I also added some helper functions to make the script even easier to use. It’s now available in my tmuxstart repository on Github.

Example usage

Below is an example of how to use tmuxstart.

1. Add the following line to your ~/.tmux.conf file:

1

bind S command-prompt -p "Make/attach session:" "new-window 'tmuxstart \'%%\''"

1. Create a ~/.tmuxstart directory:

1

mkdir ~/.tmuxstart

1. Create a file ~/.tmuxstart/main with the following contents:

1
2

new_session htop
new_window

Now you can create a tmux session called “main” with htop in the first window and a shell in the second window by executing:

tmuxstart main

Or from an existing tmux server type <PREFIX> S (<PREFIX> is Ctrl-B by default), type main and hit Enter.

When using either of these methods if a session called “main” already exists the existing session will be used instead.

How I use this

I have a separate tmuxstart session file for each of my Django projects and some of my open source projects also. I use a “main” session file similar to the one above and I have Gnome Terminal set to start with the custom command “tmuxstart main” instead of a shell.