Anyone working on a workflow for itermocil (iterm predefined layouts)?

[Maddog]

itermocil seems like a great match for an alfred workflow, I'm wondering if anyone is working on putting together a workflow for it?

 

Something like listing the different layouts and triggering them on enter.

[deanishe]

Looks like a less useful version of tmux, tbh.

[Maddog]

@deanishe Do you use iTerm and don't use its split panes feature and instead use tmux? Or do you use another terminal emulator altogether?

 

I'm not super attached to the split panes feature in iTerm, I know the shortcut to split, but never learned all the other shortcuts. I'm willing to learn another tool if it's awesome.

 

2 follow up questions:

do you do anything with tmux from alfred?

do you do most of your coding from the terminal? vim or something like that?

Edited April 19, 2018 by Maddog

[deanishe]

3 hours ago, Maddog said:

Do you use iTerm and don't use its split panes feature and instead use tmux?

 

Depends what I'm doing. If I'm just running a dev or build server (i.e. it's just a single command), I usually just use an iTerm split (and use the top-half as a normal shell). If I'm running, say, neovim, which will have a bunch of state, like open files and such, I use tmux.

 

It's mostly out of habit: I'm often connected to another machine, where it'd be silly to open multiple connections (iTerm splits), and the tmux session is preserved if the connection drops.

 

4 hours ago, Maddog said:

I'm willing to learn another tool if it's awesome.

 

It's a different kind of tool. It can be used for similar purposes as iTerm splits/tabs, but also for other stuff.

 

Apart from being able to log into the same session twice (which is a bit more convenient than dragging iTerm tabs around), you can also use tmux to run programs in the background, for example.

 

4 hours ago, Maddog said:

do you do anything with tmux from alfred?

 

No. Tmux is basically a terminal, so I just use it from my shell. I have a couple of useful aliases and commands for it. I use fzf a lot in the shell. It does much the same filtering job as Alfred, but better because it uses a fuzzy search algorithm.

 

4 hours ago, Maddog said:

do you do most of your coding from the terminal? vim or something like that?

 

I mostly use VimR these days for coding. Sublime's bugs are getting on my nerves, SublimeLinter sucks with multiple Python versions, and vim-go is way, way better than the Sublime plugin. I'm not sure I actually use any VimR features that plain neovim in a shell doesn't have, though.

 

What do you use?

[Maddog]

Yeah, my guess was that you're doing much more on the terminal, I almost never connect to remote shells and do all editing in VSCode.

In the terminal I always have at least 2 windows with many (many) tabs and panes, usually with a special 2-5 pane-layout per project.

 

So I was looking for a tool that will allow me to predefine these pane-layouts easily so I can close tabs and not worry about losing a silly thing like where my panes used to be and which folder they had open.

 

I watched a video about tmux, I feel like if I ever switch to 50/50 linux/mac it'll be worthwhile to learn, but while I'm 100% on mac, the iTerm tabs/panes feel more natural than "simulated" tabs/panes if that makes sense.

[deanishe]

20 minutes ago, Maddog said:

2-5 pane-layout per project

 

What do you have running in 5 panes?

 

21 minutes ago, Maddog said:

the iTerm tabs/panes feel more natural than "simulated" tabs/panes if that makes sense

 

Absolutely.

[Maddog]

53 minutes ago, deanishe said:

What do you have running in 5 panes?

 

Every tab is project oriented and some projects consist of client+server or a main project+library and I usually work on both at the same time.

 

1. one big pane for either tests or console output of the main aspect of the project

2. watch and transpile (Typescript)

3. for client-side builder and bundler (some projects do #2 & #3 at the same time, some are broken into separate transpile step and another for test/build/bundle)

4. Supporting mini-services, mostly custom ones because I start most 3rd party services from hotel + alfred

5. I also work on cli apps and one app can do different things, so for every type of major command I have a pane

 

 

Edited April 19, 2018 by Maddog

[deanishe]

That's exactly the kind of thing I'd use tmux for because it makes it easy to divvy up the screen and run commands in the windows/panes.

So yeah, itermocil sounds like a great tool for the job.

[dixhuit]

@Maddog Did you ever get anywhere with this? I've bumped into this thread twice now wondering if such a thing exists. Might have a go myself if there's nothing out there.

[Maddog]

On 10/24/2018 at 7:47 AM, dixhuit said:

@Maddog Did you ever get anywhere with this? I've bumped into this thread twice now wondering if such a thing exists. Might have a go myself if there's nothing out there.

 

@dixhuit - I only ever think about doing it when my iterm crashes and I have to restore all my tabs/panes manually.

But over time crashes that reset the positions of everything became pretty rare (restarting the OS or iterm flawlessly restores everything reliably now, it used to be very buggy).