Project Continuity

[nyarly]

I hate to ask, but what's the status of this project? There hasn't been any activity in a while, it seems like, and there are several PRs and Issues opened and seemingly unaddressed.

The potential for this tool is amazing, but right now I'm having trouble getting use out of it - my regexes seem to be overridden by the default ones, and there's trouble counting terminal cells that prevents the thumbs swap screen from matching up with the source pane. I'd being very willing to work on fixes for those, but it seems like I might be the only one who got value out of that.

Pinging @fcsonline just for visibility.

Also /cc @MartinLoeper @x10an14 @tapthaker @purajit @njhoffman @Rational-Curiosity @Avimitin @markx - all with forks of this project that were updated in the last year. Is there appetite to supplement (or take over) maintenance, if that's what makes sense?

[Avimitin]

I don’t use this plugin for a while since I found using mouse to drag and select is more efficient in my workflow. But I think if you got tmux enhancement from this plugin, fork and fix it for yourself is not a valueless choice.

[nyarly]

It's not valueless but there's also value to the time invested in doing that. I think the calculus for me is that making the fixes by and for myself wouldn't rise to a profitable use of that time. But working with others, or for the benefit of others as well might.

Another consideration is that sometimes projects like this lose their momentum because another solution arises that's superior, and I wonder if something like that has happened here. You're saying mouse selection is better for you, and I'm happy you've found a better solution - I was looking for something like Thumbs because I wanted something more efficient than mouse selection.

[purajit]

I used to use my own fork of this, but I've recently (a week ago) switched to tmux-fingers which
this project is based on - I've found it to be even slightly more ergonomic, faster, and less jerky
(thumbs sometimes shifts things around while re-rendering the screen in selection mode; I
haven't had the time to check why), and has been updated more recently. The only thing
missing from it is a way to paste the selection into the buffer without adding it to the clipboard,
but I've added a PR for it there.

But yeah - this is an incredible invaluable feature I use dozens of times a day to the point that
I don't even notice it. It's on the same tier as Ctrl+R to me. This is a valuable fork, and fingers
is written in an odd Ruby-like language called Crystal, but that does seem to be just much better
functioning, maintained, and active.

Another hesitation is that fingers/thumbs is honestly one of the two big reasons I live permanently
in tmux, and if Ghostty (the terminal emulator I use) ends up implementing something like this
natively, I'd be switching to that. I'd still be using this in the situations where I do need tmux,
but it would become less important. Based on the amount of support for ghostty-org/ghostty#2394,
I wouldn't be surprised if there are others like that too.

TL;DR I think it will be difficult to create a fork of this and maintain that as the primary project,
while most people will likely stick to either fcsonline/tmux-thumbs or Morantron/tmux-fingers.
I'd recommend using fingers, and while it would be cool to maintain a Rust port, there honestly
just isn't enough incentive for it (not to mention the trust that would need to be built for a fork).

[nyarly]

That's really interesting - I've heard of Crystal, but I'm not aware of any software I use written in it.😆 I was aware of a tmux-fingers written in Python, and found that it had similar issues regarding text jumping around. I've seen about a half-dozen tmux plugins that do "something like vimperator" but none that have bubbled up to inclusion in nixpkgs which is my current barometer for "worth trying out."

The point about a terminal is not only well taken, but Alacritty (my own preference) appears to have an equivalent feature. It even allows separate bindings for different hints, which means I might be able to bind one keystroke for "paste files/paths" and another for "copy Terraform module names."

Thanks for the perspective and insight!

[nyarly]

Just as an aside, terminal integration might be my solution for now, but I think there's some value in the idea of breaking thumbs out as its own tool, and being able to apply it to any scrollback, as an alternative to fzf and friends.

[purajit]

I was on Alacritty till a few months ago, iirc the "hints" feature was more limiting compared to
fingers/thumbs and forced specific workflows, but maybe I didn't spend enough time to see what I
could configure. If you check it out, lmk how it goes and if you're able to make it behave like this!

And yeah, a generic scrollback-based thumbs would be pretty ideal.

[tapthaker]

I use this tool on a daily basis and can take up maintaining it going forward if there is enough interest. However, I don't see a detailed roadmap over here that we should invest in. Fix all the quirks / add more regexes / and keep it up to speed with the latest tmux or other terminal emulator APIs ( Ghosttty / iTerm etc )

[nyarly]

I'd be happy to help. I know the position mismatch/cell counting behavior is going to be a hard time for anyone who isn't experiencing it directly. I think I'm overcommitted in terms of taking on maintenance though. Very glad to hear you stepping up @tapthaker, but would like to hear @fcsonline's opinion.

[MartinLoeper]

My two cents: I switched back to tmux-fingers as it works more reliably. I tried to apply some fixes for misplaced labels but couldn't do so quickly.