make 'name' for session sticky

Comment 1 by gnach... on January 19, 2011 21:16

(No comment has been entered for this change)

Labels: ~~Type: Defect~~, Type: Enhancement

Comment 2 by brenden.morgentha... on February 16, 2011 15:04

This option was available in alpha16, at least through the bookmark I had previously set. I just upgraded to the svn version last night (for themes support none the less, must have teh pretties!) and now it doesn't honor the option "Keep address book entry name in session-set title" by itself.

You have to first select the global option of "Show address book entry name" under Preferences => Appearance. Not a huge issue but there wasn't anything to tell me that one was reliant on the other until I tried it.

Comment 3 by gnach... on February 17, 2011 07:33

Maybe if "keep address book entry name in session-set title" is on then we should disregard the "show address book entry name" preference. OTOH, this could cause confusion for folks who'd expect the global preference to take precedence. Hmm.

Comment 4 by schou... on April 19, 2011 19:11

I'm using version 0.20.20110413. I would like the option to disable (or ignore) server-initiated tab title changes. I only want the title to use the profile name I've manually entered. I often have 10-20 terminal tabs open and I rely on having short, easily-recognizable labels to quickly scan each tab. If the titles are constantly changing as I interact with various sessions, it makes it much harder to find the tab I want to select.

Thanks!

Comment 6 by pixelchu... on April 19, 2011 20:08

EDIT:

I am also using 0.20.20110413. If I do not use a profile (aka: bookmark) and simply SSH to a remote box, the tab/window title does not update, it simply stays as 'Default'. Is this by design? (It did this in previous alpha, too.)

With multiple split panes to different remote hosts (where using Profile may not be an option e.g. ssh to ssh), it would be nice to quickly validate which host I am on based on the active pane's title without having to look up the hostname.

I realize this is a feature request for enabling 'sticky' session names, which I too think would come in handy. It would definitely be nice to be configurable, either globally, per profile, or both (override) based on certain use cases...

Comment 7 by gnach... on April 19, 2011 20:31

You could create an alias for ssh that sets the tab title before sshing.

Comment 8 by schou... on April 20, 2011 17:52

@gnach: Do you mean create a bash alias for ssh that automatically sets the title? I do not see any option in the ssh man page to set the title. And even if you could set it initially, wouldn't it be overwritten if I ssh to a server that sets the PROMPT_COMMAND env variable? And just to be clear, I am setting the tab/window name via the "Edit Current Session..." menu command. If I've taken the time to manually override the default value, it seems reasonable to expect the value to persist. It's pointless to change the name if it gets overwritten the next time I move to a new directory or run a command on the server I'm working on. Thank you for your time looking into this issue.

Comment 9 by gnach... on April 20, 2011 18:36

@schou, try using bash script for sshing:

#!/bin/bash
echo -e "\033]0;$1\007"
ssh $1

Second, why not change your bash prompt to not override the title? There are a few limited cases where iTerm2 should ignore commands it gets from the host because the user can't easily prevent it (e.g., the option to disable blinking text), but in almost all cases setting of the window title is under the user's control.

Comment 10 by schou... on April 20, 2011 19:05

@gnach: I work as a backend engineer at a company with about 200 linux servers, any of which I may need to access throughout the day. I usually log in as my own user, then I'll often su to root or to another user. It's not practical or desirable for me to disable the PROMPT_COMMAND env variable for every account on every server I access. The main reason is that some other engineers probably use that feature so I don't want to disable it for them at the server level. That's why I think it should be a client-side option to use that feature or not. I guess for me it boils down to the fact that iTerm2 (and iTerm before it) allows you to enter a title for the current session. But then it immediately overwrites it the next time it receives a PROMPT_COMMAND from the server. Why even allow the user to enter a new title if it is not guaranteed to be sticky?

Thanks again for taking the time to consider this issue.

Comment 11 by gnach... on April 20, 2011 19:43

Thanks for the clarification; it makes a lot more sense now. No new features will be added for 1.0, but I'll keep this open for 1.1.

Comment 12 by eydai... on March 23, 2012 16:53

At this point I'd call it a bug (so you can put it in 1.0). There's no point in setting the window name when terminals just reset it. Just starting a vim session has vim redo it. At least I don't know what changes it, but it never stays at all.

Comment 13 by geor...@google.com on March 23, 2012 17:30

Just to clarify this for myself:
To reproduce:

Turn off prefs->appearance->show profile name
Open a new session (title will "Shell")
Cmd-I, enter a new title ("New title")
echo '^[]0;foo^G'

Actual result: user-set title (from profile name) is overridden by server-set title
Desired result: Both profile name and title co-exist, but only after the user edits the profile title
Complicating factor: Although this could be accomplished by turning on prefs->appearance->show profile name, that takes too much space because it always shows the profile name, but you only want it sometimes.

Decision:
The crux of the issue is that the user wants to show the profile name only after it has been changed by the user. This is most sanely fixed with a scripting callback run when the user changes the session's profile name and have it set the session title.

Status: Done

Labels: Milestone: Release3.0

mentioned in commit 20f04e94

make 'name' for session sticky

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