Open same file in already running instance of Helix

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Open same file in already running instance of Helix

2023-08-02

Recently, I came across this issue:

I find that I have occasionally (frequently!) made the mistake of two instances of helix in different terminals editing the same file. This causes me a problem, because I will then have changes in one of the instances overwrite changes that are made in another. The worst case is when I accidentally switch back to an instance that has an older version of the file open.

after some consideration, I believe this issue can be solved by using WezTerm

The proposed solution involves the following steps:

Use the command wezterm cli list to list the panes.
Check if there is any running instance of hx that shares the same current working directory as the file you want to open
If there is a matching instance, send the command :open $file_path\r to that pane to open the file
If no matching instance is found, call hx as usual

Here’s the script I’ve come up with:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

tty=$(tty)
hostname=$(hostname | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
pwd=$(pwd)
file_path=$1

pane_id=$(wezterm cli list --format json | jq --arg tty "$tty" --arg opening_cwd "file://$hostname$pwd" --arg file_path "file://$hostname$file_path" -r '.[] | .cwd as $running_cwd | select((.tty_name != $tty) and (.title | startswith("hx")) and (($opening_cwd | contains($running_cwd)) or ($file_path | contains($running_cwd)))) | .pane_id')
if [ -z "$pane_id" ]; then
    ~/.cargo/bin/hx $1
else
    if [ -n "$file_path" ]; then
        echo ":open ${file_path}\r" | wezterm cli send-text --pane-id $pane_id --no-paste
    else
        echo ":open ${pwd}\r" | wezterm cli send-text --pane-id $pane_id --no-paste
    fi
    wezterm cli activate-pane --pane-id $pane_id
fi

Tags: helix wezterm

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