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Are there any terminal multiplexers for Cygwin/Windows other than Gnu's screen?

I know of 2 alternatives to the Gnu's screen application: Byobu and TMux. However, neither of these run under Windows using Cygwin.

Oliver Salzburg
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Jen S.
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    This question is now out of date. It is possible to run tmux under Cygwin. http://java.ociweb.com/mark/programming/tmuxInCygwin.html – Jack O'Connor Nov 19 '13 at 21:57

5 Answers5

8

Indeed neither byobu nor tmux are available as Cygwin packages, but you could try building them from source. Lots of programs do build without Cygwin-specific patches these days.

(Btw, byobu actually is Screen, but with a fancy default configuration.)

ak2
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    As a little update on the matter: tmux is now available on cygwin (as is tmux) as a package, available through the default cygwin installer. – deucalion Apr 13 '14 at 20:00
8

It looks like the current byobu version (5.18) works out of the box on cygwin.

To install it, I did the following:

  1. download byobu from https://launchpad.net/byobu
  2. tar xzpf byobu-* && cd byobu-*
  3. install make and screen in cygwin
  4. ./configure && make && make install

and byobu is working...

Indrek
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mdd
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  • You need pyhton module `snack` for it to work properly. – mike Sep 27 '13 at 14:06
  • Thanks much! Worked for me in latest MSYS2. Does anybody know how i can apply `screenrc`/`screen_layout` configs? I have a 3 split pane that im already accustomed to. Maybe there's an easy way to split the panes that I havent seen yet. – Brian Thomas Aug 25 '17 at 21:50
  • @BrianThomas please open a new question. – mdd Aug 25 '17 at 22:44
4

As far as I know, tmux isn't buildable for Cygwin - something to do with Unix Domain sockets not working right in that environment. Sad, I know.

camperdave
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1

I would like to update this with a note that I have successfully installed byobu under Cygwin 1.7.9 - although I may have implicitly installed other dependencies, I was able to download the source, compile, and install with absolutely zero issue. I received the same route file note but it did not stop it from loading- the python error will though

Charles Kozler
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I installed the cygwin gnu screen package.

Then I downloaded the latest byobu tarball and installed it following it's readme-file. But after installation I could not run it, I gave up at this point:

Administrator@ntmachine ~
$ byobu
/bin/byobu/lib/byobu/include/shutil: line 292: /proc/net/route: No such file or
directory
/usr/bin/env: python: No such file or directory

It would be easy to meet the python requirement in the last line, but I believe the /proc/net/route issue would be difficult.

So I will use screen now on cygwin instead of byobu.

There does not seem to be a tmux package. And as camperdave pointed out, it could be not buildable for cygwin.

mit
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    Howdy! If you file this as a bug against byobu at bugs.launchpad.net/byobu, I'll do my best to fix it. (Upstream maintainer of byobu here). – Dustin Kirkland Mar 02 '12 at 03:55
  • How would you use screen on `cygwin`, im my case `msys2`? I cant find a way to build the source, does anybody have a source and a way to build, e.g. a `configure` file or a `makepkg` present? – Brian Thomas Aug 25 '17 at 21:47