More generic sidebar?

[Efreak]

Any way to make this plugin more generic? I'd love to have a pop-out sidebar that I can use to save notes, run other commands, etc that gets shared with other windows. Maybe something along the lines of embedding another tmux window inside each sidebar, connected to a single instance of nano -t $HOME/.tmux-sidebar-note.txt?

I don't know a whole lot about tmux, I actually mostly use byobu with a few tmux settings for command shortcuts and adjusting the colors, so if this is just a simple tmux command/setting that doesn't require a plugin, please excuse my ignorance.

[bruno-]

Hey,
the simplest way to achieve this is via tmux native key binding.. by putting something like this in .tmux.conf:

bind v split-window -h 'nano ~/my_notes.txt'

That will open an editor with notes in a split pane when you press prefix + v. Plugins not required, vanilla tmux. Possible downsides if you like to nitpick your workflow:

• new pane with notes will *always* focus (the cursor will be moved to new window)
• depending on your tmux version you might only be able to get a pane split on the right side, not left. (Left split is possible in tmux 2.0 with a flag I think)
• you can't just use the same key to *toggle* new split pane as with tmux-sidebar

You can achieve all of the above things with tmux-sidebar. The feature is undocumented because I didn't know what to use it for. Put the below line in .tmux.conf and reload it:

set -g @sidebar-key-v 'nano ~/my_notes.txt,left,50,focus'

You can tweak the above setting to your liking:

• @sidebar-key-v will bind the command to prefix + v. You can choose any other key eg for prefix + t use @sidebar-key-t.
• 'nano ~/my_notes.txt,left,50,focus' - this value contains options for the new window. It's 4 comma separated fields:
  • nano ~/my_notes this command will be executed in a new pane
  • left or right
  • 50 width of a new window (will be remembered per directory). if empty will default to half of the screen
  • focus when sidebar is opened, the cursor will be focused to it. Leave empty for no focus

Let me know how this works and if you find this useful.

[rosshadden]

Another thing you can do is set @sidebar-tree-command. This is more useful if you only want to have the behavior you desire, and not the original behavior.

In my case I have set -g @sidebar-tree-command "vifm -c 'only' .", which runs my file manager vifm in the sidebar.

[bruno-]

That's a good idea @rosshadden. Wanna add that to the options doc? Just open a PR.

Other than that I think this question/issue is solved. Please ask if you need more help.