Kittens for session management

[muchzill4]

Hi,

First of all thanks for a blazing fast terminal emulator! Kitty is lovely. 😍

I'm trying to replicate tmux(inator) session management and switching. I've found an old issue, which contains suggestions that I'm trying to follow.

The general idea is:

• for session spawning - present a tui to select a kitty session to spawn - decided to go with a find-like command passed to the kitten as an arg, such command should return a list of session files to select (imagine ~/Projects/foo/kitty-session.conf, ~/Projects/nested/bar/kitty-session.conf)
• for session switching - use kitty @ ls and present a tui to select os window by name

So far I've hacked together a find+select for kitty session files.

Now I'm struggling to figure out a nice way to read the list of kitty os windows. The only this I've managed to decipher in existing kittens is a combination of command_for_name and encode_send in a Handler.

1. What is the best way to send kitty @ ls equivalent in main() of a kitten, so that a tui can be provided to select one of the windows to focus?
2. My assumption is that I can set os window names permanently via wname arg to add_os_window, is this correct?
3. My select implementation integrates heavily with existing kittens.tui. I'm starting to think that it was a terrible idea and I should probably craft a less coupled solution. Am I correct in thinking is kittens.tui should not be considered a public api?

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edit: For posterity https://github.com/muchzill4/kitty-session (decided to stick with os builtin window switching for now)

[kovidgoyal]

On Fri, Dec 25, 2020 at 03:30:00PM -0800, Bartek Mucha wrote: 1. What is the best way to send `kitty @ ls` equivalent in `main()` of a kitten, so that a tui can be provided to select one of the windows to focus?

Simply run kitty +kitten @ ls using subprocess.check_output() This assumes you have either: 1) setup remote control globally or 2) are running the kitten via something like map f1 launch --allow-remote-control kitty + kitten mykitten

2. My assumption is that I can set os window names permanently via `wname` arg to `add_os_window`, is this correct?

name corresponds to the --name cli arg and wclass to the --class cli arg. They set properties of the OS window in the underlying operating system's window manager and whether they work depends on the window manager in question. In X11 they are WM_CLASS. Note that neither of these are present in @ ls output currently but are easy to add if needed.

3. My select implementation integrates heavily with existing `kittens.tui`. I'm starting to think that it was a terrible idea and I should probably craft a less coupled implementation. Am I correct in thinking is `kittens.tui` should not be considered a public api?

Like pretty much all undocumented kitty code, you can use it, in the knowledge that: 1) It may change in the future 2) I dont make it a habit to break things without good reason, so it is unlikely to change. It's up to you what tradeoff you prefer.

[kovidgoyal]

Oh and if you wish to avoid runnigng a subprocess in your kitten, you can use the create_basic_command and encode_send functions from kitty.remote_control. For an example of their use, see the broadcast kitten. Note that you have to do more than send, you will need to read the response as wel.., but that should not be hard.

[muchzill4]

Awesome, thanks.

I have mistakenly assumed that enabling remote control won't be necessary when using kitty.remote_control from within kittens.
I guess the builtin kittens are treated differently in that regard? I was looking at kittens/resize_window which does encode_send as well, but after testing it via custom keybinding map kitty_mod+k kitten resize_window, it yields "Remote control is disabled".

Using subprocess is an obvious and easy way! 😄

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Out of curiosity, why is remote control optional as a setting?

[kovidgoyal]

And I committed code to make the class/name for os windows available in the @ ls output

[kovidgoyal]

On Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 02:09:24AM -0800, Bartek Mucha wrote: Out of curiosity, why is remote control optional as a setting?

It's a security risk, any program running inside kitty has full access to everything else.

[muchzill4]

It's a security risk, any program running inside kitty has full access to everything else.

Pardon my ignorance and getting slightly off topic, but isn't that the case for any software you run on your machine? Could you give a concrete example? Is it because a trusted program can read/output escape sequences that'd cause remote control command execution?

[kovidgoyal]

On Sat, Dec 26, 2020 at 03:25:54AM -0800, Bartek Mucha wrote: > It's a security risk, any program running inside kitty has full access to everything else. Pardon my ignorance and getting slightly off topic, but isn't that the case for any software you run on your machine? Could you give a concrete example? Is it because a _trusted_ program can read/output escape sequences that'd cause remote control command execution?

Progarms running sure su as another ser, programs running over ssh, etc etc etc.