Attaching to tmux

Connect a SServer to an explicit socket and find the existing work session. The program prints its name and leaves the tmux server running. It reports an error if the connection fails or the session is absent.

This controls tmux from your program. To open a session in your terminal, use $tmux attach-session; the shared guide covers interactive attachment and detaching.

Connect to an existing server¶

Save the complete program as src/main.rs. LIBTMUX_SOCKET_PATH selects the existing server. The launcher below supplies a private socket for trying the example.

use std::error::Error;
use std::time::Duration;

use libtmux::Server;
use tokio::time::timeout;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> {
    let socket = std::env::var("LIBTMUX_SOCKET_PATH")?;
    let server = Server::builder().socket_path(socket).build()?;
    let result = timeout(Duration::from_secs(5), async {
        let sessions = server.sessions().await?;
        if !sessions
            .iter()
            .any(|session| session.name().as_bytes() == b"work")
        {
            return Err("The work session does not exist".into());
        }
        println!("work");
        Ok::<_, Box<dyn Error>>(())
    })
    .await;
    let closed = server.shutdown().await;
    result??;
    closed?;
    Ok(())
}

Setup and run¶

Use an empty directory on Linux with Git and tmux 3.3a or newer installed.

This example was checked with Rust 1.97.1.

Save this file beside the program using the displayed filename.

[package]
name = "connect-example"
version = "0.1.0"
edition = "2024"

[dependencies]
libtmux = { path = "libtmux/crates/libtmux" }
tokio = { version = "1.53.1", features = ["macros", "rt-multi-thread", "time"] }

Save the launcher as run.sh. It starts an isolated tmux server, runs the program, checks that the session still exists, then stops only that server. Cleanup runs after failures too. A failed shutdown keeps its socket directory and prints its location for inspection.

#!/bin/sh
set -eu

binary=$(command -v tmux)
directory=$(mktemp -d "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/libtmux-rs-attach.XXXXXX")
socket="$directory/tmux.sock"

cleanup() {
    status=$?
    trap - 0 HUP INT TERM
    if [ -S "$socket" ] && ! "$binary" -S "$socket" kill-server; then
        printf 'Cannot stop tmux; kept %s\n' "$directory" >&2
        exit 1
    fi
    rm -rf "$directory" || exit 1
    exit "$status"
}
trap cleanup 0
trap 'exit 1' HUP INT TERM

unset TMUX TMUX_PANE
export LIBTMUX_SOCKET_PATH="$socket" TMUX_BIN="$binary"
"$binary" -S "$socket" -f /dev/null new-session -d -s work /bin/cat
"$@"
"$binary" -S "$socket" has-session -t '=work'

Fetch the verified library revision, build, and run:

$ git clone https://github.com/libtmux/libtmux-rs libtmux &&
  git -C libtmux checkout d4e08b4eaab62ef4eeedab79b47973ae9a1de310 &&
  sh run.sh cargo +1.97.1 run

The program prints work. To use an existing server of your own, set LIBTMUX_SOCKET_PATH to its socket and run the program without the launcher. That launcher is responsible for the demonstration server’s lifetime.

Find or create a session¶

The example only looks up a session. If your application creates a session after an unsuccessful lookup, another client may create the same name between those operations. Handle the creation error instead of assuming the lookup reserves the name.

For a complete program that starts and owns its server, see Capture pane output. Continue with Sending keys once you have a pane handle.