tmux on Cygwin

tmux_cygwin.md

Steps to install tmux in Cygwin

Install required Cygwin packages

1. run Cygwin setup.exe
2. install these packages that are not installed by default: automake, gcc, git and pkg-config

Install libevent

1. browse http://libevent.org
2. download libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz
3. open a cygwin terminal
4. cd to directory containing downloaded file
5. tar zxf libevent-2.0.21-stable.tar.gz
6. cd libevent-2.0.21-stable
7. ./configure --prefix=/usr
8. make && make install

Install ncurses

1. browse http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses
2. download ncurses-5.9.tar.gz
3. open a cygwin terminal
4. cd to directory containing downloaded file
5. tar zxf ncurses-5.9.tar.gz
6. cd ncurses-5.9
7. ./configure --prefix=/usr
8. make && make install

Install tmux

1. open a cygwin terminal
2. git clone http://git.code.sf.net/p/tmux/tmux-code tmux-tmux-code
3. cd tmux-tmux-code
4. ./autogen.sh (will see many warnings; if it complains about \r not found, convert autogen.sh to use Unix line endings with mv autogen.sh temp.sh; dos2unix -o autogen.sh temp.sh)
5. CFLAGS="-I/usr/include/ncurses" ./configure --prefix=/usr
6. make && make install

Configure Cygwin and tmux

1. to use the Solarized color scheme, see here.
2. to manually adjust colors, fonts, cursor shape, and more right-click the Cygwin title bar and select "Options...".
3. create a .tmux.conf file include at least this line so the mouse and arrow keys can be used to switch panes:
4. set -sg escape-time 250
5. for more information about tmux configuration, see here.

Run tmux

1. open a cygwin terminal using mintty (the shortcut that opens the terminal should run C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe)
2. tmux

I found tmux in https://github.com/tmux/tmux

For anyone else who got here from the first google result, you may be interested to know that tmux is now available directly as a cygwin package: https://cygwin.com/cygwin/packages/x86/tmux/

Thanks for the info @jcb91

@jcb91 very helpful, thanks!

To install precompiled binary Tmux and make it working correctly on Cygwin you must install these pakage in this order first ( using Setup-x86.exe )

1. libevent
2. ncurses
3. tmux

otherwise it won't work without any error message.

When compiling tmux itself I got below error.
...
/home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/alerts.c:149:(.text+0x569): relocation truncated to fit: R_X86_64_PC32 against undefined symbol timerclear' names.o: In functioncheck_window_name':
/home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/names.c:80: undefined reference to timerclear' /home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/names.c:80:(.text+0xf4): relocation truncated to fit: R_X86_64_PC32 against undefined symboltimerclear'
session.o: In function session_update_activity': /home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/session.c:284: undefined reference totimerclear'
/home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/session.c:284:(.text+0x11fe): relocation truncated to fit: R_X86_64_PC32 against undefined symbol

timerclear' status.o: In functionstatus_timer_callback':
/home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/status.c:162: undefined reference to timerclear' /home/jakubczn/tmuxIDE/tmux-tmux-code/status.c:162:(.text+0x169): relocation truncated to fit: R_X86_64_PC32 against undefined symboltimerclear'
tty-term.o:tty-term.c:(.rdata$.refptr.cur_term[.refptr.cur_term]+0x0): undefined reference to `cur_term'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Makefile:704: recipe for target 'tmux.exe' failed
make: *** [tmux.exe] Error 1

Any Idea why ?