automatic session creator for tmux.

tmux-dev.sh

#!/bin/bash
create_session() {
    # robustly split the space separated list of window names.
    read -r -a WINDOWS <<< "$NAMES"
    # override parameter list with names of windows.
    set -- "${WINDOWS[@]}"
    # create session with first window argument.
    tmux new -d -s "$SESSION" -n "$1" || return 1
    shift
    # `seq 0` actually produces the output `1 0` thus the script would
    # break if the user only wants 1 window, this check prevents that.
    [ $# == 0 ] && return 0
    # create the remaining windows
    for i in $(seq $#)
    do
        # use indirect expansion to get the name of the window.
        tmux new-window -d -n "${!i}" -t "$SESSION:$i" || return 1
    done
    return 0
}

bail() {
    echo "[ERROR]: could not create session '$SESSION'."
    exit 1
}

while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]
do
    case "$1" in
        -h|--help)
            PROG_NAME=$(basename "$0")
            echo "$PROG_NAME"
            echo "automatic session creator for tmux."
            echo " "
            echo "USAGE:"
            echo "     $PROG_NAME SESSION_NAME <NAMES> [OPTIONS]"
            echo " "
            echo "OPTIONS:"
            echo "     -h, --help            show brief help"
            echo "     -a, --attach          automatically attach to the session"
            echo "NAMES:"
            echo "     -n, --names <LIST>    names of windows, separated by space; ignored if the"
            echo "                           session already exists and [-a|--attach] is present"
            exit 0
            ;;
        -a|--attach)
            ATTACH=1
            shift
            ;;
        -n*|--names*)
            shift
            NAMES="$1"
            shift
            ;;
        *)
            # NOTE: any misspelled arguments fall here as well, hence we are only
            # interested in grabbing the first positional argument, ignore all else.
            [ -z "$SESSION" ] && SESSION="$1"
            shift
            ;;
    esac
done
# if the SESSION name and window names are not empty then try to create a new session.
if [ -n "$SESSION" -a -n "$NAMES" ]; then
    # check if the session already exists
    # NOTE: this also checks if there is a server already running.
    tmux has-session -t "$SESSION" 2>/dev/null
    if [ $? == 0 ]; then
        # if the session already exists but no `attach` flag was given then alert user.
        [ -z "$ATTACH" ] && echo "[WARN]: '$SESSION' already exists, use [-a|--attach] to attach to it."
    else
        # otherwise create it, bail if something goes wrong.
        create_session || bail
    fi
    # lastly, attach to the session if the `attach` flag was given.
    [ -n "$ATTACH" ] && tmux a -t "$SESSION"
else
    [ -z "$SESSION" ] && echo "[ERROR]: missing session name, use 'tmux-dev --help' for usage."
    [ -z "$NAMES" ]   && echo "[ERROR]: missing window names, use 'tmux-dev --help' for usage."
    exit 1
fi

I got tired of having to manually create tmux sessions with multiple windows (which I use a lot), this became particularly annoying after I realized that sessions disappear once you restart your machine, so I made this script to make the process much faster.