Show HN: ssh and cd get married (github.com)

TL;DR: a 3 line exercise in bash argument munging.

  t="${!#}"
  c=("ssh" "-t" "${@:1:$(($#-1))}" "${t%:*}" "cd ${t##*:}; \$SHELL -l")
  "${c[@]}"

That's literally the whole repo.

echo "cd /your/favorite/folder" >> ~/.bashrc

If you are an Emacs user, Tramp does this, e.g. you can open a file like:

/user@example.com:/some/remote/path/file.dat

Directory navigation (dired) works too, you can also open a shell in the remote directory (M-x shell)

Alternatively, you could keep a tmux session open on the server and just attach it on connect. That way you can have everything arranged just the way you left it on disconnect. Same applications running, multiple windows, splits, etc. And you don't even need to start a new shell on connect.

    ssh user@host -t tmux attach 

You can add an alias for it.

    alias backtowork='ssh -t user@host tmux attach -t worksession'

The last argument allows you to attach a chosen session if you have more than one running.

Using tmux on the server and attaching sessions on the client is a better option.

plus if you're going for bash instead of python to avoid dependencies, just go for sh. It's not like it would be hard to code or anything in sh.

I hate little extensions like this because if I make them part of my workflow, I am completely hindered when I find myself on a machine that doesn't have this. (Every other machine in the world.)

I like to take advantage of temporal locality. My zshrc is configured to take me to the most recent place that I have been whenever I open a new shell:

  autoload -U add-zsh-hook
  record_pwd() { pwd > ~/.cwd }
  add-zsh-hook chpwd record_pwd
  touch ~/.cwd
  cd `cat ~/.cwd`

I'm trying really hard to see the utility in this, as somebody who almost obsessively aliases commands to save keystrokes. But it's almost the same number of keys, at the expense of having to mix them together.

This feels less like a marriage and more like trying to tie two very different animals together.

I'd much prefer if this was some kind of host-alias based magic, where "ssh my_server_web" took my to "my_server:/srv/http/my_site", "ssh my_server_db" took me to my_server and opened mysql, etc.

There are two things I find odd about this solution.

You still have to type the path you want to cd to. See previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6229001 for possible solutions.

The github example specifies the username to ssh to. Assuming you ssh to the host more than once see man ssh_config and the User parameter.

And screen/tmux, obviously.

It would be much more useful if you can make an scp with autocomplete by pressing tab in the terminal.

scp root@host:/long(tab)_file_name .

I think it's a cool exploration. Thanks for sharing.

Even better: make the script work with local paths as well.

Then you can put

    alias cd='sshcd'

in your .bashrc, and you won't have to distinguish between local and remote paths ever again.

Any benefits with this over running something like this? Other than it being shorter and easier for someone not familiar with console commands?

  ssh -t yourserver.com 'cd /some/dir/;exec /bin/sh'

A pretty cool improvement. And you can easily add remote directory autocompletion if you simply steal the autocompletion function of `scp`: complete|sed -n 's/ scp$/ sshcd/p'

For what it's worth, this is broken when the target directory contains spaces/wildcard characters, etc. I would suggest you consider using something like the following to generate the command line you pass to ssh:

  printf -v cmd 'cd %q && $SHELL -l' "$target_dir"

Also, dropping the ':' and just having an additional argument would make your life a bit simpler. What's with the array assignment just to invoke the command? Seems a bit unnecessary. The microoptimizer in me tells me you should use 'exec' as well :).

What shell and theme is he using?

a version that works inside your zsh scripts. there may be a better way to do it

t=${@[$#]}

c=("ssh" "-t" "${@:1:$(( $# -1 ))}" "${t%:}" "cd ${t##:}; \$SHELL -l")

"${c[@]}"