109 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
3 KiB
Markdown
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# How to create Tmux plugins
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Creating a new plugin is easy.
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For demonstration purposes we'll create a simple plugin that lists all
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installed TPM plugins. Yes, a plugin that lists plugins :) We'll bind that to
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`prefix + T`.
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The source code for this example plugin can be found
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[here](https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tmux-example-plugin).
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### 1. create a new git project
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TPM depends on git for downloading and updating plugins.
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To create a new git project:
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$ mkdir tmux_my_plugin
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$ cd tmux_my_plugin
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$ git init
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### 2. create a `*.tmux` plugin run file
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When it sources a plugin, TPM executes all `*.tmux` files in your plugins'
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directory. That's how plugins are run.
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Create a plugin run file in plugin directory:
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$ touch my_plugin.tmux
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$ chmod u+x my_plugin.tmux
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You can have more than one `*.tmux` file, and all will get executed. However, usually
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you'll need just one.
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### 3. create a plugin key binding
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We want the behavior of the plugin to trigger when a user hits `prefix + T`.
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Key `T` is chosen because:
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- it's "kind of" a mnemonic for `TPM`
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- the key is not used by Tmux natively. Tmux man page, KEY BINDINGS section
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contains a list of all the bindings Tmux uses. There's plenty of unused keys
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and we don't want to override any of Tmux default key bindings.
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Open the plugin run file in your favorite text editor:
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$ vim my_plugin.tmux
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# or
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$ subl my_plugin.tmux
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Put the following content in the file:
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#!/usr/bin/env bash
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CURRENT_DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"
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tmux bind-key T run-shell "$CURRENT_DIR/scripts/tmux_list_plugins.sh"
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As you can see, plugin run file is a simple bash script that sets up the binding.
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When pressed, `prefix + T` will execute another shell script:
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`tmux_list_plugins.sh`. That script should be in `scripts/` directory -
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relative to the plugin run file.
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### 4. listing plugins
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Now that we have the binding, let's create a script that's invoked with
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`prefix + T`.
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$ mkdir scripts
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$ touch scripts/tmux_list_plugins.sh
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$ chmod u+x scripts/tmux_list_plugins.sh
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And here's the script content:
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#!/usr/bin/env bash
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# fetching the directory where plugins are installed
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plugin_path="$(tmux show-env -g TMUX_PLUGIN_MANAGER_PATH | cut -f2 -d=)"
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# listing installed plugins
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ls -1 "$plugin_path"
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### 5. try it out
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To see if this works, execute the plugin run file:
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$ ./my_plugin.tmux
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That should set up the key binding. Now hit `prefix + T` and see if it works.
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### 6. publish the plugin
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When everything is ready, push the plugin to an online git repository,
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preferably GitHub.
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Other users can install your plugin by just adding plugin git URL to the
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`@plugin` list in their `.tmux.conf`.
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If the plugin is on GitHub, your users will be able to use the shorthand of
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`github_username/repository`.
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### Conclusion
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Hopefully, that was easy. As you can see, it's mostly shell scripting.
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You can use other scripting languages (ruby, python etc) but plain old shell
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is preferred because of portability.
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