tramp-term.el

Provides a quick way to launch an ssh session in an ansi-term with directory tracking pre-configured. This makes opening remote files via TRAMP directly from the ssh session as easy as C-x C-f.

Installation

It is strongly recommended to install tramp-term with package.el (included in emacs 24+). A package is currently available on available on MELPA.

Basic usage

Add the following to your init file to make tramp-term available:

(require 'tramp-term)

Only one command is provided. Run it to be prompted in the minibuffer for a user (optional) and host to connect to:

M-x tramp-term

A list of hosts will be provided for auto-completion. These hosts are taken from the configuration in ~/.ssh/config.

Once the ssh session has been established simply open files as you would in a normal ansi-term or shell buffer with find-file:

C-x C-f

As you change directories, emacs' default-directory will be kept in sync, including the TRAMP syntax to open the remote files.

Shell Support

tramp-term supports the following shells on remote hosts:

• Bash (default)
• Zsh
• Tcsh (including csh)

The shell type can be configured in several ways:

1. Auto-detection (recommended): Set tramp-term-default-shell to 'auto to automatically detect the remote shell
2. Manual configuration: Set a default shell type or configure per-host shells
3. Interactive selection: If auto-detection fails, you'll be prompted to select the shell type

Configuration

• tramp-term-default-shell - Default shell to use for connections. Options:

  • 'bash (default)
  • 'auto (auto-detect remote shell)
  • 'zsh
  • 'tcsh

• tramp-term-host-shells - Alist of (hostname . shell-type) pairs for remembered shell types. This is automatically populated when shells are detected or manually set.

• tramp-term-after-initialized-hook - Hook called after tramp-term has been initialized on the remote host. Hooks should expect a single argument which contains the hostname used to connect to the remote machine.

Auto-Detection

When tramp-term-default-shell is set to 'auto, tramp-term will:

1. Attempt to detect the remote shell using $0 variable
2. Cache the detected shell type for future connections to the same host
3. Fall back to user selection if detection fails

Example Configuration

;; Enable auto-detection for all hosts
(setq tramp-term-default-shell 'auto)

;; Or set specific shells for specific hosts
(setq tramp-term-host-shells '(("server1.example.com" . zsh)
                               ("server2.example.com" . tcsh)))