tmux configuration

If you’re on a Mac and don’t have tmux installed, you can use ./setup.sh --install-tmux. This will create a new environment with tmux and symlink the executable to your ~/opt/bin directory. This expects that you’ve already set up conda (with ./setup.sh --install-conda).

Here are the general features of the .tmux.conf file:

• Set the prefix to be Ctrl-j (instead of the default Ctrl-b)

• Use mouse

• Reset escape key time to avoid conflicting with vim

• Set a large history size

• Use vim mode for navigating in copy mode

• When creating a new window or pane, automatically change to the directory of the current window or pane.

Here are some shortcuts for window and pane navigation:

command	description
Alt-arrows	move around panes
Shift-arrows	switch windows (left/right only)

Copy/paste in vim and tmux

In general, if things seem strange, try adding Shift to select/copy/paste commands.

This is by far the most annoying part about using tmux and vim together.

copy method (Linux)	copy method (Mac)	where does it go	how to paste (Linux)	how to paste (Mac)
shift-select text		middle-click buffer	shift-middle click
shift-select text, then Ctrl-shift-C	shift-select text, then Cmd-shift-C	clipboard	ctrl-shift-v	cmd-shift-v
tmux copy mode (ctrl-j[). You probably want to avoid using this inside vim.	tmux copy mode (ctrl-j[). You probably want to avoid using this inside vim.	tmux clipboard	ctrl-j]	ctrl-j]

Another annoying situation is when copying text from the terminal into an email. In this case, we cannot use tmux copy mode, because X windows doesn’t know about it. Instead:

• if you’re in a pane, make it full screen (Ctrl-j, z)

• if you’re in vim, turn off line numbers (:set nonu), or maybe quit out of vim and just cat the file

• shift-select text in terminal

• middle-click to paste into email