Vim + Tmux

• What to expect

• Vim

  • What is Vim?
  • Why Vim?
  • Demo

• Tmux

  • What is Tmux?
  • Why Tmux
  • Demo

• Vim + Tmux

  • What you can do to leverage the two
  • Demo

What to expect from this talk

• I will explain what vim is and how to use it (breifly…)

  • Configuration, basic usage, common actions
  • Plugins, how to manage them, and how to write your own

• I will explain what tmux is and how to use it (breifly…)

  • What tmux is
  • Configuration and basic usages
  • Plugins/Wrappers

• I will explain how to use the two together (sortof…)

  • Vimux
  • Thats about it…

What to expect from me

• I am terrible (okay… probably ‘inexperienced’) at giving talks

  • so set your expectations low

• I am not going to indoctrinate you to use these tools (for the most part…)

  • I want this talk to show you why I use this setup
  • Describe pros and cons

• I am not going to bash your current setup

  • Okay, that probably isn’t true

What I expect from you

• Basic Unix/Linux terminal usage

  • I don’t have time to explain this
  • Tmux is not something you can use on windows, sorry.
  • (But hey, linux doesn’t cost anything, plus you can use linux VM’s in windows)

• SILENCE!!!

  • Nah, just kidding.
  • Questions/Critiques are welcome (and encourage).
  • Heckling is legit too (to an extent…)

The gist of it…

• Terminal based text editor

  • though there are versions you can use without using the terminal…

• Keyboard based. No Mouse.

  • though you can use it if you want…

• Very slim and minimalistic

  • though you can change that…

The Advantages of Vim

• Modal development

  • Normal, Visual, Insert modes
  • Allows you to edit quickly and effeciently
  • No mouse required!

• Availble on all systems (even Windows)

  • Works best on Unix based systems

• Language agnostic

  • It’s just a text editor

• Very lightweight

  • But very customizable

Vim movement

• Movement in Vim is done in Normal Mode

• Uses the h, j, k, l keys to move one character at a time

  • You can also use the arrow keys, but it is highly discouraged

• To move word by word, you can use the w, e, and b keys

• To Move by paragraphs, you can use the { and } keys, or ( or )

  • Requires empty lines to work correctly

Vim modes (Modal Development)

• Normal mode (aka ‘Command Mode’)

  • Used for movement and commands
  • Staring mode
  • Also can be returned to by pressing Esc or Ctrl-c in any other mode (for the most part)

• Insert Mode

  • Entering text
  • Nuff said
  • Entered i, I, a, A, o, O and others.

• Visual Mode

  • Selecting text
  • Used modify, duplicate, replace, and delete selected text
  • Entered using v, V, Ctrl-v and others

Vim: Copy/Paste

• Most copying and cutting is done from Visual Mode

  • To copy (yank) some selected text, press y

  • To cut (delete) some selected text, press x

  • All copied and cut text is put in a single paste buffer

• To paste the text in the buffer after the cursor, press p

  • And to paste it before the cursor, press P (shift p)

Vim: Save/Quit

• To save (write) a file, go to command mode and type :w

• To quit Vim, go to command mode and type :q

  • This really is ‘quiting’ a split, but we will get into that more later

  • By Default, you are also required to save before quiting. To override this, use :q!.

  • Or to make it one step, use :wq.

Vim: Buffers

• Each file that is opened is kept in a buffer, and can be re-accessed at any point

• To switch between the buffers, you can type :bp and :bn to move to the previous and next buffers respectively

• To delete a buffer (close a file in Vim), you can type :bd.

  • This will close the split you are in as well if it is not the last split that is open

  • It will also not close vim if you close the last buffer, and will just take you to a empty file buffer

Vim: Splits

• In Vim, you are able to ‘split’ the window vertically or horizontally

  • By default, it will split the current split (or window) in half and use the current buffer that is in the original split to display in the new split.

  • The buffers are shared between split, so you are able to switch between them freely.

• To create a new horizontal split, just press Ctrl-w s, or :split

• To create a new verticle split, just press Ctrl-w v, or :vsplit

Vim: Splits cont.

• Both :split and :split can take a file name in the argument to open a new file with

• You can switch between splits by prefixing Ctrl-w with h, j, k, or l (moving your to the slit to the left, down, up and right respectively)

• Resize a split by combining Ctrl-w with +, -, < or > (increasing the size of the split upwards, downwards, to the left and to the right respectively)

• You can close a split by either closing the buffer (:bd), or quiting :q

Vim: Search

• Searching for a specific word or phrase in vim can be accomplished by pressing / and then your word or phrase and pressing Enter

• By pressing n and N, you can cycle through the search results forward and backward respectively

• Set :set hlsearch to have vim highlight your search results

  • Typing :noh will turn of the currently highlighted text

• More info on Vim Regex can be found here: http://vimregex.com/

Vim: Find and Replace

• The syntax for find and replace: :%s/[existing-word]/[new-word]

• You can add modifiers on to end of the expression

  • ’c’ will require a confirmation with each substitution

  • ’g’ will make the change globally on each line

  • ’i’ ignores case (default) and ‘I’ is case sensitive

• Example: To replace all instances of ‘apple’ with ‘banana’, type :%s/apple/banana/g

Vim Configuration

• Vim provides a lot of settings that you can customize

• What you have seen so far:

  • :set hidden
  • :set hlsearch

• But these all go away once you close vim, so how do we persist these settings?

Vim: The .vimrc

• The .vimrc for you should live within your home directory.

  • With a fresh install of Vim, it might be blank or non existant, but you can create it there and Vim will recognize and respect it

• In it, you can set all the defaults that you want when vim loads up

  • Settings
  • Custom keybindings
  • Custom functions
  • etc.

.vimrc settings

Useful settings:

• Turn on syntax highlighting: syntax on
• Turn on line numbers: set number
• Turn off line wrap: set nowrap
• Avoid compatability errors: set nocompatible
• Autocomplete menu: set wildmenu
• Set command line height: set cmdheigh=2

.vimrc keybindings

• You are also able to create keybindings for the multiple modes of Vim in your .vimrc

• To create a command, you need three things:

  • The ‘mapping’ type: map, nmap, vmap, imap

  • The key combination

  • The command as you would enter it in normal mode

• Example to map ‘F4’ to :bn: nmap <F4> :bn<CR>

  • Non-alphanumeric keys usually are surrounded by < and >

  • <CR> stands for ‘Carriage Return’, or ‘Enter’

Vim: Plugins

• Plugins in Vim (and like in any other software ever) allow you to extend the functionality of Vim

• The Plugins community in vim is incrediblely strong and active

• There is a plugin for just about anything you want

Vim: Noteable Plugins

• NERDTree: File drawer
• NERDCommenter: Mass commenting
• minibufexpl: Vim and Tmux integration
• snipmate: Code snippets with tab completion
• ack.vim: Ack integration with Vim
• ctrlp: Fuzzy file finder
• pathogen: Plugin loader
• vimux: Vim and Tmux integration

What is Tmux?

• Tmux stands for/is a terminal multiplexor

  “it enables a number of terminals (or windows), each running a separate program, to be created, accessed, and controlled from a single screen. tmux may be detached from a screen and continue running in the background, then later reattached”

• … huh?

Tmux: Why Tmux?

• Runs on both Mac and Linux (sorry Windows)

• Runs in it’s own seperate process

• Lightweight

• Customizable (or as customized a a terminal window manager can get)

• Scriptable: You can script actions to be done in tmux like running a command in another window to setting up your environment on startup

• Sharable: You can have tmux run on a shared socked that other users on the same machine can share

  • AKA: Paired programming
  • With ssh: Remote paired programming

Installation

• Linux: $ sudo apt-get install tmux

  • Note, the current only version 1.1 is available using this method. Install from source to get the most up to date version

• Mac: brew install tmux or sudo port install tmux

Install from source

• Linux prereqs

  • $ sudo apt-get install build-essential
  • $ sudo apt-get install libevent-dev libncurses5-dev

• Mac Prereqs: XCode

Install Instructions:

$ wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/tmux/tmux/tmux-1.6/tmux-1.6.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf tmux-1.6.tar.gz
$ cd tmux-1.6
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

Tmux: Attach and Detach

• To enter tmux, you can just type tmux from the command line

  • This will attach you to a new session that is created with the name of ‘0’ (creative, I know)

  • If you want name it yourself, use tmux new -s [name_of_session]

• To leave a session, just close it by typing exit in the last open pane

• To detach without closing a session type Ctrl-b d or tmux detach

• To attach to an existing session, use tmux attach -t [name_of_session]

  • To see a list of the open sessions, you can type tmux list-sessions or tmux ls from outside of a tmux session

Tmux: Windows and Panes

• To create a new tmux verticle split: Ctrl-b %

• To create a new tmux horizontal split: Ctrl-b %

• To move between pains, combine Ctrl-b with Up, Down, Left or Right

• To close a pain: Ctrl-b x

Tmux: Configuration

• Just like the .vimrc, tmux also has a config file that you can add to your home directory: .tmux.conf

• As with the .vimrc, you are able to customize the controls and the look and feel of the screen with the .tmux.conf

• Another similarity is that everything you are doing in the .tmux.conf is just executing a command that you can otherwise just run using tmux’s command mode

Tmux: Configuration Cont.

We are about to make a lot of changes to the .tmux.conf, and restarting tmux everytime is no picnic. To make this easier, we can reload tmux by running the following command:

source-file ~/.tmux.conf

This is similar to reloading your .bashrc when you make changes. To make this even easier, you can bind this to a key mapping:

bind-key r      source-file ~/.tmux.conf; display-message "~/.tmux.conf is reloaded"

Tmux: Configuration Cont.

• The default prefix key is also not that easy to use, and while it doesn’t conflict with a whole lot, it still is nice to have a prefix key that is convenient to use.

• To change the prefix key, add the following to your .tmux.conf

  unbind C-b set -g prefix C-a

Tmux: Configuration Cont.

Movement in tmux also doesn’t default to something that you are propbably already comfortable with: the Vim key bindings, so you can make some changes to make using tmux similar to Vim

Change movement keys:

bind h select-pane -L
bind j select-pane -D
bind k select-pane -U
bind l select-pane -R

Change how you resize panes:

bind-key J resize-pane -D 5
bind-key K resize-pane -U 5
bind-key H resize-pane -L 5
bind-key L resize-pane -R 5

Change copy mode: set-window-option -g mode-keys vi

Tmux: Configuration Cont.

These are just a few more configs that are nice:

set -g base-index 1    # start window index of 1

set -sg escape-time 1  # fixes some delay issues in vim

bind-key a      send-key C-a   # `Ctrl-a a` sends `Ctrl-a`
bind-key n      command-prompt 'rename-window %%'
bind-key N      command-prompt 'rename-session %%'
bind-key -r <   swap-window -t :-
bind-key -r >   swap-window -t :+

# Copy mode keybindings
unbind p
bind p paste-buffer
bind -t vi-copy 'v' begin-selection
bind -t vi-copy 'y' copy-selection

Tmux: Addons

• Tmuxinator: Startup tool for tmux
• Brian’s Tmux Conf: Some more cool config options

There really aren’t a lot of addons that you need for tmux…

Tmux: Brian Hogan’s Tmux Book

This book is not only a great intro to tmux, but was also a great reference for me when writing these slides.

tmux: Productive Mouse-Free Development

It’s only $11, so you have no excuse not to get it!

… unless you don’t have $11…

Nick LaMuro

Twitter @nicklamuro

github https://github.com/NickLaMuro

Slides http://talks.nicklamuro.com