Tmux and Ansible

Tmux is a “terminal multiplexer” that allows you to have multiples window terminals in a single terminal. And our beloved Ansible can help install and setup tmux.

Installing

You need first install Tmux’s package. Among the several ways, we’ll just use the standard and offical package. This works for most of the operating systems.

- name: Install tmux
  package:
    name: tmux
    state: present
  tags: tmux

With just that you have a working tmux. But let’s make it fancier.

Tmux Package Manager - TPM

1. TPM is an plugin manager for tmux and it’s pretty simple to install. You basically just have to clone the Git repo and call it in your tmux config file.

- name: Clone TPM repository
  git:
    repo: 'https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm.git'
    dest: /home/willian/.tmux/plugins/tpm
  become: true
  become_user: willian
  tags: tmux

1. Then create a file called .tmux.conf in your home folder with the following content:

set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tpm'
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-copycat'
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-pain-control'
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-sensible'
set -g @plugin 'tmux-plugins/tmux-yank'
set -g @plugin 'seebi/tmux-colors-solarized'
set -g @colors-solarized 'dark'

run '~/.tmux/plugins/tpm/tpm'

1. Lastly, press prefix + I (Ctrl + B + I by default) to install all the plugins.
2. If you want tmux to start by default with every terminal you open, add this to your .bashrc.

if [[ -z "$TMUX" ]]; then
    ID=$(/usr/bin/tmux ls | grep -vm1 attached | cut -d: -f1)
    if [[ -z "${ID}" ]]; then
        /usr/bin/tmux new-session
    else
        /usr/bin/tmux attach-session -t "${ID}"
    fi
fi

Steps 2. and 4. can be automated with Ansible too. See Ansible’s file module for further information.

Done. :) Feedback is always welcome, so feel free to comment any tweaks you do in your system.

References

1. These code snippets were extracted from my Ansible playbooks and config file’s repository.