Solarized + tmux + ls + bold text

Zach Whaley — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 02:16:21 +0000

How I got Solarized, tmux, ls, and bold text to work together.

Running ls from a Solarized tmux session returns a bunch of gray directories and files, instead of the distinguishable colors we would expect.

This is because ls uses "bright" colors for directories and certain files, but Solarized has overridden these "bright" colors with its base colors.

But I don't want "bright" colors, I want bold text. So I spent some time googling and hacking on config files, and I eventually got what I wanted!

ls to print colored directories and files with bold text ðŸ˜€

As a preface, I honestly have no idea why this worked ðŸ˜•

My Setup

I've only tested this within my own setup, so if it doesn't work for you, sorry â˜¹ï¸

Solarized

No changes here, thankfully.

I just set my terminal's colors to the beautiful Solarized colors as instructed by Ethan.

tmux

You must be using tmux 2.2 or above. I noticed this did not work on tmux 2.1.

$ tmux -V
tmux 2.2

My TERM environment variable is set to xterm-256color by default. I'm unsure if that is something terminator is doing or Fedora, but it is what it is.

In my .tmux.conf file, I set the default-terminal option to screen-256color.

set -g default-terminal screen-256color

Finally, I used the -2 option when opening tmux to force tmux to assume the terminal uses 256 colors. I created an alias for tmux which includes this

alias tm='tmux -2'

Bold text

I created a .dir_colors file in my home directory using dircolors.

dircolors -p > ~/.dir_colors

This file defines all the color codes ls will use when printing files and directories.

I then used the ANSI SGR parameter code 38 to specify colors from the extended 256 colors.

For example: From dircolors, the config to set directory colors, DIR, was set to 1;34, which results in a bright(1) blue(34) color.

DIR 1;34

But, as I've mentioned, the Solarized "bright blue" is not actually blue, but a gray hue.

Using the 38;5 ANSI code, I was able to specify the bold(1) ANSI 256(38;5) color blue(4), NOT bright!

DIR 1;38;5;4

And there you go!

You can find the rest of my .dir_colors file, along with all my home directory config files on GitHub.

http://zachwhaleys.website/2017/01/19/solarized+tmux+ls+boldtext/

Better P4 Output

Zach Whaley — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 02:09:31 +0000

P4 Output

If you're using Perforce for version control, and you're using their command line tool, p4,
you probably know that p4 is not a great tool.
Perforce itself is a decent version control manager, it's certainly not the worst (*cough* CVS),
but the p4 tool is just not that great ðŸ˜ž

p4's output is hard to read and inconsistent
p4's various commands use inconsistent options and arguments
And p4's return codes differ from the return codes of their own APIs!

There is nothing sensible I can do about the last two problems, but the bad output.
That was something I could fix.

Better P4 Output

I wrote a program called BP4O (Better P4 Output) to improve p4's output and readability.

Without BP4O, you get a deluge of text scattered across the screen.
Finding the files, their changes, and the changelists they share is difficult and nearly impossible at a glance,
and keeping that information straight between changes and commands is even more difficult.

With BP4O, we turn that same output into a readable block, reasonably separated by sections, columns, and colors.
Relevant information, like what files are in a changelist, and how files have been modified, is easily visible.

BP4O will also color your diffs, page long output, and provide aliased commands!

Overall, BP4O makes using p4 better without changing how you use p4.

Installing BP4O

BP4O works with Bash, Zsh*, and Fish shell, and is available for

macOS:

brew tap zachwhaley/beer
brew install bp4o

Ubuntu:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zachwhaley/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install bp4o

Fedora/CentOS:

sudo dnf copr enable zachwhaley/bp4o
sudo dnf install bp4o

The Code

BP4O's code is open source on GitHub

Contributions are welcome!

http://zachwhaleys.website/2017/01/05/bp4o/

DEV Community: Zach Whaley

Solarized + tmux + ls + bold text

My Setup

Solarized

tmux

Bold text

Better P4 Output

P4 Output

Better P4 Output

Installing BP4O

The Code