Re: sharing environment between terminals.

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 18/11/12 10:35 AM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Nov 17,  4:39pm, Ray Andrews wrote:
> }
> } Is there a way to instantly share environment variables between running
> } terminals?
>
> Generally speaking, no.  The environment of each process is private to
> that process, allocated by the operating system at the time the process
> is forked.
>
> If desperate enough, you could set up something using the zsh/tcp module
> to have your shells cooperatively swap new environment strings around.
> One shell (or an external daeamon of some kind -- condsider the model
> used by ssh-agent) would have to control the "master" environment, and
> hand out changes to the other shells on request.  The other shells would
> check at opportune times (during precmd for example) whether changes are
> available, and apply them.
>
Most of that sounds way above my head for the moment.  But I did get it 
working quite well using, as you suggest, precmd(). Basically, I have a 
command that sets whatever env. variable and also writes a script that 
can set that variable.  precmd() sources that script, which adds the 
variable to the local env of any xterm.

I use this to create shortcuts to the current directory on each xterm. 
'$t0' being automatically set to the current dir on 'pts/0', etc. I can 
then change to a different terminal and do stuff like:

cp ./* $t0
cd $t5
mv $t2/* $t3
etc.

... which saves a lot of typing.

Still, I would have thought that there would be an easy way to share 
stuff between xterms. I think of my xterms as different windows into the 
same house--I want them to share everything--history, environment, 
everything.