Re: Heads up: tmux imported into src

["Roland C. Dowdeswell" <elric%imrryr.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 12:58:33PM -0500, der Mouse wrote:
>

> > Well, given that tmux will have to actually proxy something if one
> > writes a proxy for it, then I think that we can assume that tmux
> > would then in fact need to listen in some fashion.  If tmux has to
> > listen then it will need to be aware of where it should listen and
> > what to do when it receives requests.  This will necessarily be
> > implementation dependent unless there is a standard.
> 
> Good points.
> 
> I should look at moussh with that in mind.  I need to document what it
> does anyway, but I also should see if I can invent a not-too-insane
> interface that would let fundamentally ssh-unaware programs (which I
> think tmux should ideally be) proxy agent connections.
> 
> > You could make the same arguments about the X11 DISPLAY information.
> 
> True.  With X, there _is_ a standard for X over TCP; there's a common
> case for X over AF_LOCAL sockets, but it's discouragingly far from
> standard.

That's unfortunate, yeah.

I think that my main point is the fact that tmux runs locally only
implies that support for this kind of proxying does not necessarily
belong in tmux itself.  There are all manner of solutions which
could be imagined that involve no tmux support.  You could start
tmux with an ssh-agent that can be pointed, you could play with
symlinks to local domain sockets, you can start tmux under a
standalone X11 proxy that can repointed, etc.  None of these require
tmux to support anything.  And you have this luxury because tmux
is a local application.  There are likely X11 proxies already that
one could use with tmux.

I think that this kind of proxying in tmux would lead to lots of
unnecessary memcpy(3)s, unnecessary code complexity in tmux, and
more implementation dependence.  And I don't think that any value
would be added in the process.

--
    Roland Dowdeswell                      http://Imrryr.ORG/~elric/