Change working directory of 2 terminals at once

Question

I've typically have gnome-terminal open with ~8 tabs, using 2 consecutive tabs for the same task (one has emacs, the other is used to do git checkins and unittest runs and so).

When changing tasks, I need to move to a new directory - in both tabs. How can I change the work directory of the second tab to the one of the first tab, with as few steps as possible? Preferably keyboard only.

Answer 1

Here is a work-around: on one tab, record the CWD into a temp file, on the other tabs, cd to the just-saved dir. I would put these two aliases to my .bashrc or .bash_profile:

alias ds='pwd > /tmp/cwd'
alias dr='cd "$(</tmp/cwd)"'

the ds (dir save) command marks the CWD, and the dr (dir recall) command cd to it. You can do something similar for C-shell.

Answer 2

Try the terminal emulator terminator. You can open multiple shells and use the "Broadcast All" feature to send the same command to all of them.

Answer 3

What you are looking for, can be achieved by writing a shell script with the help of

xdotool

Example script that you can use:

#!/bin/bash
xdotool type "cd $1
"
xdotool key Ctrl+Next
xdotool type "cd $1
"

Answer 4

In zsh, you can do the following:

1. Run a command in a shell.
2. Run fc -AI in that shell.
3. Run fc -RI in another shell.
4. Run !! or press Up then Enter in the second shell to recall the last command executed in the first shell.

fc -AI writes out the command history of the first shell, and fc -RI reads it back into the second shell. If you turn on the inc_append_history, then the equivalent of fc -AI is performed automatically after each command.

If you turn on the share_history option, then all history lines are automatically shared between all shell instances, so you can go straight from step 1 to step 4. This can feel invasive.

If you used a relative path to change the directory, you'll need to obtain an absolute path first. One way to do that is to type cd $PWD (or just $PWD if you have the auto_cd option turned on) and press Tab (or C-x * with some completion settings) to expand $PWD then press Enter.