I started using tmux almost year ago. In that time, I’ve seen amazing improvements in my development efficiency from the command-line—so much so that I don’t think I could go back to a regular IDE anytime soon. The tmux + vim combo is unbeatable, and has become my new IDE.

There’s been a lot of buzz amongst the hacker community about the wonders of tmux as a productivity tool. The following are my own thoughts on what makes it such a great asset to a developer.

Consistency

Using tmux with vim brings a level of consistency that I honestly didn’t think was possible with command-line tools. One of the reasons GUI-based IDEs are so popular is that they present a single cohesive view of a project space. From one application you can view the source of a project, build the project, debug it, and run it. It makes for less context-switching amongst your tools, allowing you as a developer to achieve that “flow” where you are most productive.

Despite being a command-line tool, tmux allows you to achieve this level of flow. Out of the box, its ability to do this is ok but with the right amount of customization you can truly make it shine. Adding simple shortcuts for jumping between window panes allows you to navigate between source code and command-line in a split second, making the time between making a change and testing it incredibly short. Furthermore, adding shortcuts for easily splitting window panes or adding new window panes (or tabs) makes it easy to split up a project into various portions as you work on it.

I’ve customized my tmux shortcuts to be analogous to those of vim. This way navigation, copy/pasting, and other common actions are consistent throughout my use of the tool. It makes it feel like I’m using a single piece of software, rather than a bunch of open source tools thrown together. This consistency is a pleasure to work with, and is the main reason I don’t miss using regular IDEs.

Workspace Management

It’s rare today to find yourself working on a single project. Having a tool that allows you to manage multiple projects without itself becoming a burden can be difficult. I’ve found tmux lends itself well to workspace management through the use of sessions. By keeping a separate session for each project I’m working on, I can easily switch to another project by connecting to another session.

Within the terminal this usually results in me opening a new tab for each project and starting a session for that project. In a session, I may split a pane into a view for source code and a small shell at the bottom, or I may create a separate pane to display the output of logs or other useful information to check from time to time.

The other great side-effect of this approach is that all of my workspace “contexts” are saved, so that when I go back to them everything is just how I left it. Especially when I’m working on an always-on remote machine, I can relax knowing that should I lose my connection or that I’ve just had enough and leave, my project will be waiting for me when I come back.

Flexibility

When it comes to learning a new language or development stack, having an IDE handle the nitty-gritty build details and project management takes a huge weight off a newbie’s shoulders. However, there comes a point when said newbie outgrows his training wheels, and finds that the nurturing environment their IDE offered was overly constraining. There is usually only “one way” to organize a project with an IDE, and it’s difficult to work with other developers unless they are using the very same IDE.

Most open source projects aren’t organized in a manner immediately loadable by IDEs like Visual Studio or NetBeans. Usually you download a repository of some kind, run make, and away you go. It’s done this way so that people can choose which development environment they want to use, rather than be forced into one. There’s also less bloat in terms of auxillary files that need to be checked in or tracked by source control. While tmux is awesome, using it when developing your projects doesn’t force you to use tmux for the rest of the project’s existence.

In the end, development with tmux has made my life easier, and I would encourage you to think about incorporating it into your own workflow.