Isomorphic Copy

Cross platform clipboard.

Both remote and local

Works out of the 📦 with most programs that use pbcopy, xclip, wl-copy, etc.

Works the same locally as over SSH, inside Docker containers, et al.

It even works inside Docker over SSH and then inside Docker!, infinitely chainable.

Networkless

isomorphic-cp communicates by stdio and unix socket only!

All it does is spawn subprocesses and listen to IO.

This makes it amazingly versatile.

Daemonless

You literally just run cssh <ssh-args> or cdocker <container-name>.

No local daemon required. The remote "daemon" is just a subprocess of a subprocess. Zero cost when you are not using it.

How to use

Requires xclip or wl-clipboard under GUI linux.

Clone this repo to the same location on two machines. Either relative to ~ or /.

Prepend isomorphic-copy/bin to your PATH for example:

export PATH="$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/isomorphic-copy/bin:$PATH" in your bash/zshrc file.

You need to do this on both local and remote.

Automatically most applications that use xclip, wl-clipboard, pbcopy and so forth will use isomorphic-copy with zero setup.

Works just like python virtualenv!

I added two convenience functions:

You don't have to use these. Things like pbcopy and pbpaste will continue to work.

echo <my message> | c Use c to copy to system clipboard

p > my_message.txt Use p to paste from system clipboard

Connect to remote with one of

cssh <ssh-args>

cdocker <docker container name>

Once daemon is launched, remote copy will propagate to local system clipboard.

Remote applications that use xclip, pbcopy, wl-copy will propagate to local system clipboard.

Local -> SSH -> Docker

If you want to copy from a Docker container on a remote machine.

from local run cssh <ssh-args> to remote

from remote run cdocker <container name / sha> to container

And you are set!

Integrations

Tmux

Copy will automatically propagate to local / remote tmux clipboard.

If daemon is run under tmux, copy will also propagate to the local tmux clipboard.

If no system clipboard is available, copy / paste will use tmux clipboard.

Copying FROM tmux will require this snippet.

set -g mouse on

bind -T copy-mode MouseDragEnd1Pane \
  send-keys -X stop-selection

bind -T copy-mode MouseDown1Pane \
  select-pane \;\
  send-keys -X copy-pipe "c" \;\
  send-keys -X clear-selection

Drag to select, click in dragged area to copy.

Replace copy-mode with copy-mode-vi if you are using vi emulation.

Vim

Neovim will only use xclip if the x11 environmental variable DISPLAY is set.

Vim will require an autocmd event.

Add this snippet to your vimrc, to work for both vims.

if has('nvim')
  " use unnamedplus only! or else will double set
  set clipboard=unnamedplus
  if getenv('DISPLAY') == v:null
    exe setenv('DISPLAY', 'FAKE')
  endif
else
  autocmd TextYankPost * call system("c", getreg('"'))
endif

Others

Most CLI applications will work out of the box. (such as lazygit, for example).

If not, check if they require DISPLAY like Neovim.

Fallback

If no system / tmux clipboard is found, setting environmental variable ISOCP_USE_FILE=1 will enable using a temp file as a crude clipboard.

It will write inside the git repo, put it somewhere safe.

ms-jpq/isomorphic_copy