Show HN: I’m writing an ebook version of the Tao of tmux

https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-continuum looks really nice as well.

I am interested in knowing any plugins beyond tmuxp / tmuxinator / teamocil that'd be worth covering in the book. https://github.com/tmux-plugins seems like a great resource.

> Hope you'll have a copywriter look through all of it!

I'll likely put the proceeds from the pre-orders to a copywriter. I want the final copy to be best it can be.

I appreciate it!

So for the nginx edit conf/restart server scenario you would:

    # vim /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    <make changes>
    :sh                             # drop to a shell
    # nginx -t                      # check config, let's assume it failed due to a missing "}"
    # exit                          # go back to vim
    <make changes>
    :sh
    # nginx -t && nginx -s reload   # config check passed
    # exit                          # back to vim
    :q                              # exit vim
    #

1. Hierarchical context management. I use different sessions for different projects. One session might have my main development work, one session for a random debugging session for a coworker, one session for a side project or project euler challenge. Within each session I usually have multiple windows. For main development I have one window that has source code and development, one window for testing, and one window for command line/ data wrangling. Within each window I might have a couple panes, for example in testing I have a split screen with testing code on the left and the command line for running tests on the right.

2. Multiple paste buffers. Recently I had 3 or 4 environmental variables I was setting on some different devices. I stuck them into different copy paste buffers and went to town instead of repeatedly copying and pasting from a document.

3. Alerts. I'll often have a few jobs that run for between an hour and a couple hours that I want to just start and forget about. When they're done you can have tmux give you a notification on the window that the job was in and you can go check it out and do more work.

Minor, but interesting use cases:

- share tmux sessions with coworkers. I haven't done this as much but it's great for remote debugging.

- process persistence. Use this all the time. No more nohup & business.

- naming windows. I name almost all my windows like "test" or "hardware".

- moving windows and panes around. You can move panes to different windows and windows to different sessions really easily.

- save tmux state before shutdown. There's a separate plugin that does this but you an actually write your current session to disk and load it up again when you restart.

EDIT: formatting

So basically I set up a tmux session with panels for all those things. It was a good way to keep it all running without needing to always have it "open" per se.

Also it's handy for running certain services/programs in the background when I ssh into a server.

Highlights for me: better support for vertical splits/panes, better mouse support, and more convenient scripting features (for instance, integrating xclip and the tmux copy/paste buffer).

It's possible that screen has caught up in the last few years, but I haven't followed its development.