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Comment by voltagex_ | Hacker News Reader

The tmux integration is a really interesting piece of work.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ABI0kqUUxoAjxhWW3AsWFis6...

http://code.google.com/p/iterm2/wiki/TmuxIntegration

Yes it's technically interesting but am I alone in thinking that it sort of defeats the purpose of using tmux in the first place?

I use tmux partly because I come from a background of low resources, but also because I want my essential tools to use as little resources as possible so that they always work as well as possible on any system.

Yet iTerm proposes that you use their GUI tabs, split their GUI terminals instead of drawing it all with tmux in one text console.

I guess you sacrifice some resources for usability.

If your main purpose for using tmux is sparing resources, then sure, but I think most people use tmux for session management, persistence and multiplexing. If I can use these features in a way that is better integrated with the windowing system, and still be able to attach to the session from a plain terminal remotely, I'm not going to complain.

but the scroll wheel finally works

A couple improvements I found in some other HN Tmux thread --

    set -g mode-mouse on

    set -g mouse-resize-pane on

I'm just too used to Tmux commands so I feel really slow when using this integration.

I had trouble using it.

It appears that once you've created a tmux session you need to manually add tmux commands in a dialogue box.

The issue I've always had with the tmux integration is that it doesn't support multiple sessions simultaneously. I am typically moshed into several hosts and running tmux on each of them. I'd love to have one window per session with tabs corresponding to tmux windows.

I'm a little surprised more people don't run into this more often. I've never seen the benefit in running tmux locally. Do most people only ever use tmux on one remote host?

Edit: it's been a while since I've tried it; apparently tmux integration doesn't work over mosh at all. So s/mosh/ssh/g above and it still applies.

Does tmux integrate with itself? That is, does this solve the problem of needing different prefix keys when nesting tmux sessions (whether using iTerm2, or using a terminal emulator that doesn't itself integrate with tmux)?

I thought that, when nesting tmux instances, you just press the prefix key a number of times depending on how deep you need you need your next keystroke to propagate?

For me personally, I use ctrl-a instead of ctrl-b so I have this line in my ~/.tmux.conf:

    #send prefix to nested sessions with C-a    
    bind-key C-a send-prefix

Lastly, iterm2 uses it's own keystrokes for it's tmux integration. (i.e.: cmd-D to split vertically)

I have tmux set up so that pressing the prefix key twice switches to the previously selected window. I don't remember whether it was like that out of the box, or whether I had to configure that when I switched from gnu screen.

I take it with nested tmux sessions, cmd-D would split the outer tmux window? How would you split the inner tmux window?

> I don't remember whether it was like that out of the box, or whether I had to configure that when I switched from gnu screen.

It's worth checking your config file out.

And I'm not sure how to answer your question because the way iterm integrates with tmux is that it allows you to create split panes with their own bash sessions. If you want to run tmux in those sessions, it would be tmux running in that pane, but textually instead of graphically. Here's a screenshot to make things more clear: http://i.imgur.com/0hmw62I.png

cmd-D would just create another pane to the left.

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