tmux-resurrect/tmux-continuum alternative?

[deliciouslytyped]

Hopefully this isn't off topic here;
Does tmuxp provide an alternative to TPM/tmux-resurrect?
I'd like something where all the programs aren't written in bash, and tmux-resurrect + tmux-continuum has some problems.

tmuxp's --freeze option sounds good, but at least restoring scrollback, and at least maybe for bash, somehow having per-pane history files would be nice. (I managed to get this working relatively ok for the above plugins once....)

Is tmuxp / libtmux appropriate for attempting a better reimplementation of these?
Thanks!

[deliciouslytyped]

I'm a heavy, stateful user of the terminal and I have a lot of semi-finished things open in tmux a lot. It's really terrible when a reboot/battery depletion/crash makes me lose things. :(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_(computer_science)#Orthogonal_or_transparent_persistence

[tony]

I haven't used tmux-resurrect. To my knowledge it also freezes processes, right?

tmuxp freeze works a bit differently. tmuxp doesn't preserve processes (though I guess we could add an ability to interoperate with tmux-resurrect?). tmuxp creates a new tmux session via commands to tmux and starts new shells.

If someone wants to PR optional support for that or anything in tmux-plugins, it's fine with me.

[deliciouslytyped]

No, to the best of my knowledge resurrect has an understandably rather naive restore model. I think it checks the running process via ps and then it uses some save/restore scripts to handle individual processes. I think there's some build in vim integration, but not arbitrary processes.

• but don't quote me on this.

[deliciouslytyped]

My main priority would be restoring bash history and scrollback - the approach of resurrect should be possible to port for starters (assumption). I figured via adding appropriate functionality to the freeze sub-command.

[deliciouslytyped]

I'm working on restoring scrollback, I have dumping to a file minimally working.
Would per-pane config file entries like this be appropriate, or do you have any better ideas?

"history": {    
            "shell_history" : file,
            "scrollback" : file
            }

My current idea is both of those file fields enable the history type for the pane if they are present, otherwise it's not used.

An alternative is to just have a global option for a dump directory.

The global dump directory option involves less file and editing noise - but this probably isn't relevant because the json file is basically autogenerated? The per-pane version is more flexible if someone wants. Both could also be done but then that needs a reasonably defined precedence semantics. (Global option unless stated otherwise?)

tmux-resurrect currently seems to have some thoughts about deprecating the shell history function due to it's "invasivity", would you accept the functionality?

I think the way it currently works for resurrect is that they autotype save/restore commands into the pane. I have some more ideas like setting the history file environment variables or attaching gdb to the bash process trees (similar to https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/11427/dump-bash-command-history-of-an-active-shell-user.), but none of these seem like particularly good solutions, but I think the end result would still be nice even if it only works most of the time.

[deliciouslytyped]

Do you have some way we could discuss the design a bit? - and then I will summarize here for posterity.

[tony]

@deliciouslytyped

Up front - there are some aspects of this where tmux-resurrect overlaps with tmuxp kinda. On the tmux-resurrect readme, they mention migrating from tmuxinator (a similar thing to tmuxp). I have too much on my plate at the moment to go into resurrect in depth.

About chat: I got your email about that. Not enough to talk about yet, but in case it comes up in the future: I sent a mail to gitter.im asking for help getting orgs setup for tmux-python (and vcs-python). I tried setting it up a long time ago.

Regarding design:

I propose we find a way to add hook functionality to tmuxp.

We could use python import strings to allow arbitrary functions to execute python code, and we can pass libtmux objects inside.

plugins:
  - 'my_tmuxp_plugin.plugin.TmuxResurrect'
session_name: my session
windows:
- window_name: my window
  layout: tiled
  shell_command_before:
    - cd ~/                    # run as a first command in all panes
  panes:
    - echo pane
    - echo pane

Assume a git repo my_tmuxp_plugin with a directory my_tmuxp_plugin inside it, and a pypi package called my_tmuxp_plugin:

my_tmuxp_plugin/plugin.py:

class TmuxResurrect:
    def before_workspace_builder(self, session):
        # On blank workspace, after session created, but before any windows/panes/commands entered

        # technically, it'd be possible to do any kind of subprocess call here as well

    def before_script(self, session):
        # access to libtmux session object in tmuxp load

   def reattach(self, session):
       # if session_name already live, before reattaching

   def on_window_create(self, window):
        if window.window_name == 'my window':
            # do stuff

   def after_window_finished(self, window):  # after commands stuff commands finally entered
       pass

The thing with tmux resurrect though is 1.) they need to have it installed via TPM and/or have it in .tmux.conf.

Any ideas? Is my plugin idea a way you think tmux-resurrect / tmux plugins could be integrated into tmuxp?

[tony]

@deliciouslytyped I should also add I don't have much time to add / maintain features to tmuxp. I'm very lucky I had time to do some winter cleaning yesterday to CI *

I think the API thing makes sense since it'd allow linking into the libtmux under the hood and and pretty much doing anything. It'd also open up an area of community contribution and perhaps integration with other tmux plugins.

* I'm looking for maintainers actually #290 if you like working with python and tmux

[deliciouslytyped]

I'm pretty partial to IRC + a logging bot, but hey, it's your project. :D

I'm going to have to read over that again. I don't have any good ideas offhand.

My ability to work on things is also massively fluctuating and I'm not a huge fan of how my code usually ends up looking, so I'm not sure I could integrate nicely into the style of tmuxp.
I kind of hoped I could get the core functionality working and then get some guidance on rough edges.

[deliciouslytyped]

This isn't necessariy an ideal time for me to rearchtect the core of tmuxp... 😅

[tony]

@deliciouslytyped

This isn't necessariy an ideal time for me to rearchtect the core of tmuxp... 😅

I could stub out a plugin system to make libtmux objects available. Since I'm very familiar with the codebase, import strings, and libtmux. I could add tests and write a guide on making plugins.

What I can't address is writing tmux plugins themselves. Does that make sense?

[deliciouslytyped]

Sure.

[tony]

@deliciouslytyped The cool thing about this is if a plugin is added, it could/would be passed the Session, Window or Pane object being adjusted.

That is a very powerful API. Basically it means any python code could run, and they'd have access to libtmux.

I created an issue at #530 for a plugin system.

[deliciouslytyped]

For my current iteration of resurrect I just have this small snippet added to the inner pane loop of freeze() (using a patched verison of libtmux that has a more thorough capture_pane), and I haven't written any code for restoring yet.

           import os
            if "TMUXP_DUMP_PATH" in os.environ:
              dump_path = os.environ["TMUXP_DUMP_PATH"]
              dump_path = os.path.dirname( dump_path + "/" )
              try:
                os.mkdir(dump_path)
              except FileExistsError:
                pass
            if dump_path is not None:
              print("Dumping %s" % p)
              with open(os.path.join(dump_path, "%s-%s-%s" % (p["session_id"] , p["window_id"], p["pane_id"])), "wb") as f:
                val = p.capture_pane()
                for l in val:
                  f.write((l + "\n").encode("utf-8")) #TODO whats the correct way to handle the encoding? check some shell env var?
              print("Done dumping %s" % p)

[tony]

@deliciouslytyped Can you give me the git diff output of it?

Also, are there any other places inside of tmuxp you would find it helpful to "hook" into?