The future of tmux-powerline?

erikw commented 11 years ago

I want to hear what you tmux-powerline users think about the future of the project. While we have put a considerable effort into the project and it works quite well I think that the future might be one powerline to rule them all. Reuse of code and easier language to make segments in (python). Just look at https://github.com/Lokaltog/powerline/pull/44, much easier than bash.

What do you'll say? Shall we join forces and start porting segments to powerline instead?

greduan commented 11 years ago

I personally don't mind using different powerlines. But one powerline to rule them all is not bad either.

So my vote is neutral. :)

Lokaltog commented 11 years ago

I would love some help maintaining different parts of Powerline, so let me know if you guys are interested in joining forces and concentrate our efforts in a single project instead of having various different implementations of basically the same thing. I've also been in contact with the author of powerline-bash about the same thing.

derekbrokeit commented 11 years ago

In my opinion, I think tmux powerline would greatly benefit by taking advantage of the python Powerline library. These are the pros and cons as I see them

Pro

no need to reinvent the wheel
Wider range of available segment separator characters (not impossible with the current implementation, but needs to be added if desired)
python (in my opinion) is much more syntactically elegant and easier to understand than bash
easier to understand theme files and configuration
no more os-specific checks

Cons

adding python dependency (this is less demanding than what had been needed in earlier tmux-powerline: bash-4)
new language that some users may not be familiar with (not import to people who just use what is available)
porting segments to a new language can take time
a second time to change the configuration process (now a simple json)

What direction do you want to take this repository if made the move? The library and many (or all) of the segments would now be external. If everything were moved over, I suppose it would be a legacy repo for users without pyton, but there may be some functionality that I do not see at the moment. Perhaps some of the segments may not be moved or accepted into the main powerline repository and we will need a place to store them. Additionally, it may be a reasonable place to allow sharing of tmux themes, but perhaps the "theme" directory in the Powerline python package is already planned for this.

I definitely need to get re-familiarized with the Python package. I haven't looked at it in over a month or two and it has definitely moved leaps since then. I will gladdly help in this effort as soon as my schedule is freed up.

Lokaltog commented 11 years ago

I think the main pro with using the Python library in this case is the huge difference in code amount and code readability. This was one of the main reasons I decided to move away from vimscript. A good example of this is the weather segment and its Python counterpart (which even implements GeoIP lookup).

Regarding the Python dependency, I can't imagine this being an issue for tmux users. Python is provided in virtually all Linux distros and on OS X, and I would argue that using a patched font would be a bigger hurdle than installing Python. It's also very easy to learn the basics of Python, but end users won't ever have to look at Python code if they don't want to.

Porting the segments to Python isn't a huge task IMO, and several segments have already been ported by @liamcurry. But it's definitely an argument against pushing users to the new version before all the segments have been ported and tested.

I don't think that segments that won't be accepted into the main Powerline repo will be an issue. First of all I'd love to include every segment currently in powerline-tmux, and secondly Powerline has built-in functionality to allow third-party plugin authors to define their own segments and themes which can easily be used in themes. We could also have a common "community segments" repo with all kinds of different segments that don't fit in the main code base, these could easily be added in a theme like this:

{
    "segments": {
        "left": [
            {
                "module": "powerline.ext.tmux.segments.community",
                "name": "my_cool_segment"
            }
            ...
        ]
    }
}

pablox-cl commented 11 years ago

Seems a good idea to have one to rule them all.

Lokaltog commented 11 years ago

@erikw What are your thoughts on this?

erikw commented 11 years ago

I believe in one powerline to rule them all. Just haven't been able to start using it my self, having problems with urxvt (with unicode3 patch) and the new font patching.

When there are clear instructions on how to make a powerline segment for tmux I'll put a link in this README and tell people to port/make new segments in the powerline repo :-)

Erik Westrup erik.westrup@gmail.com (+1) 949-5454522 | 2r.se

4816 Seashore Drive, Newport Beach, CA 92663

This email is encrypted with 2ROT-13 Sent from my phone On Jan 21, 2013 8:15 AM, "Kim Silkebækken" notifications@github.com wrote:

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Lokaltog commented 11 years ago

I see that other users also report errors with urxvt, even with unicode3 support, but I suspect that you guys may be using an outdated font (the code points have changed in this version). Have you tried a font from the powerline-fonts repo?

pablox-cl commented 11 years ago

On 21 January 2013 17:16, Kim Silkebækken notifications@github.com wrote:

I see that other users also report errors with urxvt, even with unicode3 support, but I suspect that you guys may be using an outdated font (the code points have changed in this version). Have you tried a font from the powerline-fonts repo?

It seems to me that something is wrong with the old patched fonts too. Even with the "included" fonts.conf file (pretty quick assumption though of my part).. patching the fonts it's a REALLY simple process , so imho it's not that big deal... specially because the powerline-fonts have received a couple of pull requests in a few days.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to start and use the (new) powerline configuration for tmux and try to give you guys some feedback. Until now (I don't know why) the new powerline in vim looks better, and a bit quicker. I'm loving it <3. http://counter.li.org/

carwin commented 11 years ago

As of today I'm currently running both projects successfully. (Woo!) I've been lurking/looking at these projects and waiting for some free time to try them out and I have to say, they are both phenomenal.

While I don't really have any street-cred here, I'll still chime with my two cents and throw my vote for tmux-powerline being assimilated.

Even if both projects stayed separate I would probably continue using both. Thanks for all this awesomeness!

Edit: I misunderstood what I read in @Lokaltog's comment. Ditto to the separate repo for segments/themes idea. :+1:

mafrosis commented 11 years ago

I'm just popping in to throw another vote in the direction of merging the two projects :+1:

I've been running vim-powerline and tmux-powerline for almost a year now - and although at first I didn't like the idea of switching to Python due to extra CPU overhead (which is particularly obvious on small cloud instances), the benefits of having all the code/plugins in Python outweighs that.

I'll keep an eye out and see if I can't help with the porting of some plugins..

pablox-cl commented 11 years ago

Wow. Amazing :).

erikw / tmux-powerline

The future of tmux-powerline? #128

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