Dispatching tests to another tmux session

Vim
1

I’ve been using vim-tmux-runner and vim-spec-runner to run tests in a tmux pane. I like the workflow, but I’d rather run my tests in a separate tmux session I have running on a second monitor. That way I can keep my editor’s screen real-estate and still be able to easily read the test results when I want to.

I wrote some vimscript to set this up (it prompts the user for a target and sets g:spec_runner_dispatcher appropriately), but I wonder if there’s a better way.

function! Spatch()
  let sessions = system("tmux list-sessions -F '#{session_name}'")

  let target = input('Enter target: ')
  let target_session = matchstr(target, '[[:alnum:]_-]\+')

  if (sessions =~ target_session) && (target_session != '')
    let g:spec_runner_dispatcher = "call system(\"tmux send -t "
          \                        . target .
          \                        " C-L '{command}' ENTER\")"
  else
    let g:spec_runner_dispatcher = "VtrSendCommand! {command}"
  endif
endfunction

nnoremap <expr> <Leader>x Spatch()

The behavior is somewhere in between vim-tmux-runner and vim-rspec (which sends tests to a separate terminal window). Is there a plug-in that already does this?

1 Like
2

Hello @ivanbrennan,

Your code looks find to me. I might be missing something, but it looks like you’re not saving off the configuration, but instead would need to “reconnect” to tmux for each run. If that is the case, I would add something to save off and reuse the last configuration.

You could also check out tslime as it provides tab completion of sessions, windows, and panes.

3

Hey Chris. Yeah, I’m not saving the configuration yet. Between playing around with tslime, and reading Gabe’s post about you guys developing vim-spec-runner, I’ve been inspired to go a little deeper with this.

I want to build something that collapses tslime’s multi-step process (prompt for session, for window, for pane) into a single prompt with smart tab completion. It would complete the session name, then if you type : you can go on to complete the window name/number, and . will go on to complete the pane number.

I just started playing around with Vimrunner too. Cool stuff!

4

@ivanbrennan that’s some fancy sorcery you’re diving into. I’ve not done much with it, but I know its accomplished by defining a custom completion function which is defined in the help at :help :command-completion-custom. You can then set that as the completion for an input() function call. tslime shows a simple version of it, and Rails.vim has some intense completion going on that you could reference.

Good luck!

5

@christoomey I noticed in vim-tmux-runner you switched from using paste-buffer to send-keys when sending commands over to tmux. Is one better than the other?

I imagine paste-buffer might be designed to handle larger chunks of text, but I’m just guessing.

6

Well would you look at that. When I first saw this post I had zero memory of ever using set-buffer, but there it is! set-buffer would likely be a better mechanism and prevent some issues I have seen. Might just have to go back to it.

7

@ivanbrennan have you found a solution that works?