Re: Windowlist menu customization

[Amadeusz Sławiński]

On Mon, 25 Jun 2018 12:38:48 -0400
Chris Jones <address@hidden> wrote:

> GNU/screen provides a list of windows in tabular form that you can access via
> CTRL+a " or the GNU/screen CTRL+: windowlist command.
> 
> By default this list of windows displays rather little information: window
> number, window title and flags.
> 
> This is basically what users like myself already have at the bottom of the
> screen in their "hardstatus line".
> 
> I thought it would be nice to display the name of the currently
> executing program where relevant and (or) the bash $PWD for those
> windows that are currently idle just displaying the shell prompt.
> 
> The idea is to use this display to have some kind of overview of what is
> currently going on in a given GNU/screen session.
> 
> To clarify:
> 
> I have (say).. a vim session running in window #3, gdb running in window #4,
> and perhaps less /tmp/xxxx.log on windows #5, a man page on windows #6, and
> somewhat unrelated... some kind of audio player running in window #10.
> 
> As to windows #7 to #9 as well as #11 and #12 they are currently displaying 
> the
> bash prompt and are basically available to do whatever I fancy at this point.
> 
> Regarding windows #0, #1, and #2 they run e.g. a python interactive shell, the
> mutt mailer agent, and the text-mode Elinks web browser... 
> 
> Lines such as this in my .screenrc:
> 
>   screen -t P $SHELL -c "python"
>   screen -t P $SHELL -c "mutt -y"
> 
> start these "static" windows when I launch the GNU/screen session. 
> 
> I know where they are and their content never changes during the life of
> the screen session.
> 
> The default setting for the windowlist string that formats the entries is like
> so:
> 
>   windowlist string "%3n %t%=%f"
> 
> causing the windowlist screen to display for each entry, the window number 
> (%n)
> the window title (%t) and the right-aligned window flags (%=%f)
> 
> I looked into adding the last executed command - adding the %x STRING ESCAPE 
> eg. 
> 
>   windowlist string "%3n %t %x%=%f"
> 
> but alas '%x' remains set to the value of the initial command - ie. the
> command that is issued at session startup, (or the default shell when
> the window is created on the fly via eg. CTRL+a c). 
> 
> And that is usually just '/bin/bash'... with optionally whatever command
> was specified via the screen command - e.g.something like screen -t
> M $SHELL -c "mutt -y" will cause the windowlist (aka CTRL_A ") to
> display '/bin/bash -c mutt -y'. 
> 
> After that the value of the %x STRING ESCAPE is not updated to keep
> track of what is actually happening in each window in terms of what is
> currently running on top of the bash shell.
> 
> I also looked into using a backtick that returns what I am looking for via
> something like:
> 
>   windowlist string "%3n %t %8`%=%f"
> 
> where '%8`' would have been defined to screen like so:
> 
>   backtick 8 0 0 /home/cjones/bin/bt-wlist
> 
> ... but I haven't been able to find anything (such as an environment variable)
> that would let the code in the backtick script figure out anything about what
> is happening in each GNU/screen window.
> 
> As far as I can tell, nothing useful in terms of windows content (param or
> environment variable) is passed by GNU/screen to the backtick script when it
> is given control.
> 
> Hitting a wall at this point and wondering whether anyone more knowledgeable
> has gone down this path before and mignt have any suggestions.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> CJ

Hi,

(I don't think it's possible with current screen, you would need to add
some kind of tty escape for windows command, so you can get list of
window ttys.)
Eh... whatever, I pushed %T escape to git, so if you rebuild you can
screen -Q windows "%T " and it will give you list of windows ttys ;)

And then write script traversing process tree on this tty and I think
you still could get some false positives. 

This is example of runnning "man man" in one of my shells in screen:
$ ps ao pid,tty,ppid,comm,args | grep pts/2
 4696 pts/2     4681 zsh             -/bin/zsh
 5076 pts/2     4696 man             man man
 5103 pts/2     5076 less            /usr/bin/less

So if you traversed linearly it would show you /usr/bin/less, while
running "man man" ;)

I think better idea is to make sure that applications which can set
window title actually do set it to something meaningful.

Amadeusz