monotab

monotab

A command to (really quickly) open a new terminal tab in any of the directories or submodules in your repo.

Features

• Duplicate terminal: Ctrl + Shift + T but in command form.
• Open tab from anywhere under a repo: Automatically detects the repo root.
• Support for cd-ing in current terminal (useful over ssh, or in IDE integrated terminal)
• Automatically picks up submodules and git repos.
• Automatically picks up npm workspaces, yarn workspaces and pnpm workspaces.
• Include any directory (even if they aren't submodules) via glob patterns.
• Exclude any directory.
• Interactive directory picker with filtering.
• Filter as first argument for faster filtering.
• Automatically opens tab if there is only one match.

Note: monotab works best with repositories that have multiple submodules, but true monorepos are supported via .monotabrc.json.

See the Configuration section for available configuration options, and the example configuration on how to setup monorepos.

Installation

npm install -g monotab

Usage

Basics

Just write monotab or mtab under any repository that contains submodules, and it should start working.

# this starts an interactive directory selector
monotab

# this one too, use them interchangably
mtab

Tab Duplication

# this is just using the filter and relying on the
# assumption that this will only have one listing.

mtab .

Alternatively. Launch mtab press . and then press Enter

Alternatively to the alternative: Launch mtab and then press Enter

Filter The List

Launch mtab then start typing.

Alternatively, pass in a second argument to pre-filter the list.

# this will only show a list where the items all
# have "end" in them.

mtab end

Configuration

You may create a .monotabrc.json file the root directory of your repository and monotab will automatically load it. This is especially useful for monorepos where the subdirectiories are not necessarily git submodules.

The file should be a json file in the following format.

interface MonotabConfigFileInterface {
    include: string | string[];
    exclude: string | string[];
}

Both include and exclude can be a string or an array of strings that are glob patterns. Monotab uses sindresorhus/globby under the hood to support this.

Example Monorepo Configuration

.monotabrc.json

{
    "include": [
        "packages/*",
        "infra/*"
    ],
    "exclude": [
        "**/node_modules/**"
    ]
}

Setup cd In Current Terminal

If you don't want to open a new terminal tab, or if you are using a terminal over SSH or if you're using your IDE's integrated terminal (like on WebStorm or VSCode), cd-ing is your best friend.

To this you will need to add an alias to your .bashrc or .zshrc

# Assuming you use bash

printf "\n# monotab\neval \$(monotab --alias)\n" >> ~/.bashrc

Now you can use monocd to get the familiar interactive CLI, but instead of opening a new terminal tab, it will cd you to the directory.

Customizing the Alias

Just pass in a value to --alias

printf "\n# monotab\neval \$(monotab --alias cdm)\n" >> ~/.bashrc

Open running this, your alias will be cdm instead of monocd.

Alias Performance

...but node.js' startup time is far too slow it's making my terminal slow.

We hear you, I hate slow terminal startups too. Just go into your .bashrc or .zshrc and paste the following at the end.

function monocd {
    DIR_PATH=$( [[ ! -z "$1" ]] && (mtab $1 --notab 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3) || (mtab --notab 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3) );
    [[ ! -z "$DIR_PATH" ]] && cd $DIR_PATH || echo "CANCELLED";
};

Replaced monocd with anything else if you want the command to be called anything other than monocd.

Behaviour

Repo Root Detection

monotab travels up the chain of directories from current working directory and looks for the .git directory or the monotabrc.json file. If there are multiple along the parent directory chain, the directory that matches at the highest level is used.

Filter

Filter tries to match it with the entire path, but does not support matching brackets of any kind.

Singluar Match

If there is only a single match, monotab automatically creates a tab in that single matched path.

Supported On

monotab uses mklement0/ttab under the hood to create terminal tabs. As such the following terminals are currnently supported on Linux and MacOS.

1. Linux
   • Gnome Terminal
2. MacOS
   • Terminal (not tested)
   • iTerm2 (not tested)

Roadmap

• cd assistance in current terminal
• Windows Terminal Support
• Directory Labels

Known Issues

enquirer/enquirer has a hard time handling brackets as input.

License

CC0-1.0 (public domain)