How to start zellij on every shell login like tmux

[breathiness]

[jaeheonji]

Hi, @breathiness!

You can load a simple script with this command zellij setup --generate-auto-start <SHELL>.
Also, I hope this document will help you.

[nascarsayan]

This leads to infinite recursion if $ZSH_AUTO_ATTACH is set, and we ssh to the same machine inside a zellij session.
zellij attach -c causes the issue when we are ssh-ing to the same machine inside the zellij session, either by :

1. by ssh-ing to localhost, or
2. by ssh-ing from current machine M1 to another machine M2, and from machine M2 back to M1.

I am trying to fix this in my shell (nushell). So far, I've come up with the following. This fixes case 1, but does not fix case 2 though.

# List all the IP addresses of the machine
export def ip-list []: nothing -> table<ver: string, interface_addr: string> {
  ip a
  | split row (char newline)
  | each { str trim }
  | where ($it | str starts-with "inet")
  | split column --collapse-empty --regex '\s+' ver interface_addr
}

# Attach zellij if the session is SSH
export def ssh-attach-zellij [] {
  
  let x = (zellij list-sessions)
  print $x

  if ("ZELLIJ" in $env) {
    # Don't nest zellij sessions
    return
  }

  # Don't attach zellij in vscode integrated terminal
  let blacklisted_binaries = ["code", "code-insiders"]
  for binary in $blacklisted_binaries {
    if ((which $binary | length) > 0) {
      return
    }
  }

  # If env does not have "SSH_CONNECTION", don't attach zellij
  if ($env.SSH_CLIENT? | is-empty) {
    return
  }

  # If ssh client is localhost, don't attach zellij
  let ssh_client = ($env.SSH_CLIENT | split column --collapse-empty --regex
'\s+' src_ip src_port dst_port | first)
  let src_ip = $ssh_client.src_ip
  let localhost_ips = ["::1", "localhost", "127.0.0.1"]
  if ($src_ip in $localhost_ips) {
    print "SSH-ing from localhost, not attaching zellij"
    return
  }
  if ((which ip | length) > 0) {
    let ip_addresses = (
      ip-list
      | reduce -f [] {|it, acc| $acc | append ($it.interface_addr | split row "/" | first)}
    )
    if ($src_ip in $ip_addresses) {
      print "SSH-ing from Local IP address, not attaching zellij"
      return
    }
  }

  # If env has "ZELLIJ_SSH_PANE_NAME", use that name to attach zellij
  zellij attach -c ($env.ZELLIJ_SSH_PANE_NAME | default "ssh_zellij")
}

[Pvlerick]

I also have this issue; the auto-generated script is not reliable and fails most often than not.

The behavior I'm looking for is to start a new session each time, and not save sessions on disk (just like with the simple tmux script above - sorry for the tmux comparison :D)

[Pvlerick]

Best I could come up with is this:

if [[ -z "$ZELLIJ" ]]; then
  zellij attach -c main options --session-serialization false --on-force-close quit
fi

[Lockszmith-GH]

My needs are similar, the way I deal with it is by auto-starting a named session, so that it always reconnects to the same session.

This is the part of the script that does that:

    if [[ -z "$ZELLIJ_SESSION_NAME" ]]; then
        zellij attach -c $USER@$(hostname)
    fi

My zellij startup script actually does a lot more. Click to expand if you're interested:

* NOTE: If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer. *

My load-zellij script

In my .bashrc I point to my load-zellij script in the following way:

. <( load-zellij - )

This does the following:

• If zellij isn't installed, it will download it link to it from ~/bin
• It will load the utility aliases/functions and auto completion in bash or zsh
• Then it will start zellij with a <username>@<hostname> session, attaching to an existing session if it exists, creating if it does not.
• Supply a cleanup function to reset zellij (makes updating very easy, as it clears the cache and bin, and redownloads a new binary)

Below is the code for my load-zellij script:

cat ~/.local/bin/load-zellij
#! /usr/bin/env bash

# Helper function
is_sourced() {
    if [ -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then
        case $ZSH_EVAL_CONTEXT in *:file:*) return 0;; esac
    else  # Add additional POSIX-compatible shell names here, if needed.
        case ${0##*/} in dash|-dash|bash|-bash|ksh|-ksh|sh|-sh) return 0;; esac
    fi
    return 1; # NOT sourced.
}

BASE_0=${BASE_0:-$0}
BASE_SHELL=$(basename "$SHELL")

if is_sourced; then
    zellij-cleanup() {
        [[ -r "$HOME/bin/zellij"    ]] && rm     "$HOME/bin/zellij"
        [[ -d "$HOME/.cache/zellij" ]] && rm -fR "$HOME/.cache/zellij"
        [[ -d /tmp/zellij           ]] && rm -fR /tmp/zellij
        printf 'Zellij has been cleaned up, you can now reinstall it.\n'
    }
    zellij() {
        if [[ ! -x ~/bin/zellij ]]; then
            if [[ -x $HOME/.cache/chezmoi/tmp/zellij/zellij ]]; then
                ln --symbolic --relative $HOME/.cache/chezmoi/tmp/zellij/zellij ~/bin
            elif [[ ! -x /tmp/zellij/bootstrap/zellij ]]; then
                 printf "Grabbing zellij from the web!\n"
                bash <(curl -sL zellij.dev/launch) "${@}" && return
            fi
        fi
        if [[ -e /tmp/zellij/bootstrap/zellij ]]; then
            mv /tmp/zellij/bootstrap/zellij ~/bin/zellij
            rm -fR /tmp/zellij
        fi
        if [[ -x ~/bin/zellij ]]; then
            ~/bin/zellij "${@}"
        fi

    }
    zellij-completion() {
    if [[ "${BASE_SHELL}" == "zsh" ]]; then
        . <( zellij setup --generate-completion zsh | sed -Ee 's/^(_(zellij) ).*/compdef \1\2/' )
    else
        . <( zellij setup --generate-completion "$BASE_SHELL" )
    fi
    }
    zellij-completion
    # Was needed when zsh would load
    # . <( zellij setup --generate-completion "$BASE_SHELL" | sed -ne '/^function/,$p' )
    if [[ -z "$ZELLIJ_SESSION_NAME" ]]; then
        zellij attach -c $USER@$(hostname)
    fi

elif [[ "$1" == '-' ]]; then
    cat "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}"
else
    SCRIPT_NAME="$BASE_0"
    printf '%s\n' \
        "It seems $SCRIPT_NAME was invoked as a script. It should be sourced instead." \
        'The easiest way is to call it like this:' \
        "    $ . <( $SCRIPT_NAME - ) # Note the '-' after the script's name" \
        ''
fi