I finally configured screen to display the list of windows open with useful titles. Here are the few bits I needed
First, if you don't know what I'm talking about:
I occasionally SSH into work, and when I do I use a program called screen that can host multiple terminal shells. It can persist those shells and allow me to reconnect if I get disconnected or want to change computers I'm working on.
BTW, I always start screen with screen -RaAd -S x
- -a include all capabilities ...
- -A Adapt the sizes of all windows ...
- -d -R Reattach a session and if necessary detach or even create it first.
- -S
Name of the session
The default configuration makes it hard to keep track of how many terminals you have running, and what they are doing. I made three changes that help my personal workflow:
Add a persistent display at the bottom of screen
In .screenrc I appended this line:
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{=b}%{G} Screen(s): %{b}%w %=%{kG}%C%A %D, %M/%d/%Y "
Source: Julien Chaffraix, a coworker.
Set the current directory name as the window title from bash
In .bashrc I appended these lines:
if [ "$TERM" = "screen" ]; then
screen_set_window_title () {
local HPWD="$PWD"
case $HPWD in
$HOME) HPWD="~";;
## long name option:
# $HOME/*) HPWD="~${HPWD#$HOME}";;
## short name option:
*) HPWD=`basename "$HPWD"`;;
esac
printf '\ek%s\e\\' "$HPWD"
}
PROMPT_COMMAND="screen_set_window_title; $PROMPT_COMMAND"
fi
You can see that I'm using a short name for each directory, e.g. "chromium" instead of the full path or suffix path after my home directory, e.g. "~/projects/chromium". You can toggle the commented lines to try alternates.
Source: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6065/gnu-screen-new-window-name-change.
Set the name of the buffer I'm editing in vim
In .vimrc I appended these lines:
if &term == "screen"
let &titlestring=expand("%:t")
set t_ts=^[k
set t_fs=^[\
set title
endif
Source: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Automatically_set_screen_title.
