Tmux – Kill and Select Another Tmux Session

tmux

I am trying to bind X to do the following:

prompt the user whether the session should be killed
if y is entered, kill the session
after the session is killed select another session (last, previous, or next session)

Some similar commands that aren't quite right

Kill the session and close the terminal:

bind X confirm-before -p "Kill #S (y/n)?" kill-session

Prompt the user for the name of the session to kill and select next session after kill:
```
bind X command-prompt -p "kill:"  "switch-client -n \; kill-session -t '%%'"
```

I haven't been able to find examples of similar commands. Here's a solution something that doesn't work:

bind X confirm-before -p "Kill #S (y/n)?" "SESSION='#S' \; \
switch-client -n \; kill-session -t \"$SESSION\""

Best Answer

I think this is close to what you want:

bind-key X confirm-before -p "Kill #S (y/n)?" "run-shell 'tmux switch-client -n \\\; kill-session -t \"#S\"'"

Your #3 approach is along the right lines, but the problem is that confirm-before does not do status-left-style substitutions (e.g. #S) in its command string.

A caveat for the above binding is that since everything is done in from run-shell, the commands are run outside the context of any particular client or session. It really only works because the “default” client (for switch-client) and “default” session (for #S) are the most recently active ones. This works out as you would expect as long as you only have a single active client (e.g. a single user that does not type into another tmux client until after the shell commands have finished running); it could fail dramatically if (e.g.) you trigger the binding in tmux client A, but new input is received by tmux client B before the shell started by run-shell has had a chance to run its commands.

This particular race condition seems like a nice motivation for providing client/session/window/pane information to run-shell commands. There is a TODO entry about getting if-shell and run-shell to support (optional?) status_replace() (i.e. status-left-style substitutions), though maybe a better choice would be format_expand(), which is kind of a newer super-set of status_replace (offers #{client_tty}, etc.).

Related Solutions

Simulating GNU Screen’s shelltitle in tmux

Alas, after years, a solution! I also had the same problem with tmux and missed screen's behaviour. In a nutshell:

Add this to .bashrc

if [ -v "TMUX" ]; then
    PS0='$(printf "\033k%s\033" "$(HISTTIMEFORMAT= history 1 | sed -e "s/^[ ]*[0-9]*[ ]*//")")'
    PROMPT_COMMAND="printf '\033kBASH\033\\'"

and this on tmux.conf

set -g allow-rename on

For an explanation of bashrc, PS0 line have a look at this: Pass every command executed in the bash shell to a variable

For PROMPT_COMMAND I've used BASH as a label when returning to bash, you can put whatever you like (ie >_). Or you can omit PROMPT_COMMAND and leave the last command executed to be seen on the label.

When exiting the last terminal in a tmux session can it switch to another

The closest I got was a tmux function I wrote. I normally exit the shell by hitting Ctrl+D, so I programmed tmux to exit and switch sessions when hitting [PREFIX] Ctrl+D. Put the following in your .tmux.conf:

bind C-d run-shell "                                        \
    if [ #{session_windows} -eq 1 ] &&                      \
       [ #{window_panes}    -eq 1 ] &&                      \
       [ #{pane_current_command}  = 'bash' ]; then          \
        if [ \$(tmux list-sessions | wc -l) -ge 2 ]; then   \
            tmux switch-client -ln;                         \
        fi; tmux kill-session -t \"#S\";                    \
    else                                                    \
        tmux display-message \"Ignoring kill session...\";  \
    fi;                                                     \
    "

Hit [PREFIX] Ctrl+D and it exits the current session if (and only if) it holds only one shell which is not running any other commands. It will switch to another session if possible. I use the bash shell, so you might need to change it to something you are using.

ps: in case it matters, I'm currently using tmux 1.9a.

Some similar commands that aren't quite right

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Simulating GNU Screen’s shelltitle in tmux

When exiting the last terminal in a tmux session can it switch to another

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