About

This Zellij plugin is a "mini-ci". It allows you to specify commands that will run in parallel, keeping track of completed commands and their exit status. Only progressing to the next step if all the commands in the previous step succeeded.

Did one command fail? No problem! Fix the issue, re-run it with ENTER and the pipeline will continue.

How does it work?

Multitask opens your default $EDITOR in a new tab pointed to a .multitask file. Any commands pasted to this file will run when you save it.

Multitask will divide tasks into "steps" separated by an empty (whitespace) line. Running all commands in each step in parallel and only moving on to the next step if all commands exited successfully. You can re-run failed commands by pressing ENTER while focused on their pane, and if they exit successfully, the next step will be run.

Example

echo "I will be run first"
echo "I will be run simultaneously to the line above" && sleep 2

echo "I will be run 2 seconds later"
echo "so will I!"

Installation

1. Download the multitask.wasm file from the release matching your installed Zellij version
2. Place it in $HOME/zellij-plugins
3. Set a keybind to run multitask. This must be done in your configuratino file for zellij (often found at ~/.config/zellij/config.kdl). The keybind should look something like this:

normal {
    bind "Alt 1" {
        MessagePlugin {
            payload "multitask_run"
        }
    }
}

this example binds Alt 1 to run multitask, but you can use whatever you like.

4. From within Zellij, run zellij action start-or-reload-plugin file:$HOME/zellij-plugins/multitask.wasm --configuration "shell=$SHELL,ccwd=`pwd`"

Configuration options

Option	Description
shell	Sets the shebang of multitask file. $SHELL is the recommended value.
ccwd	Sets the current working directory for multitask commands. If no value is given, then the host of the zellij session is used.
layout	Sets the layout used for multitask. This should be a string. For example, if you have your layout in a file at $HOME/.config/zellij/multitask_layout.kdl then use layout=`cat $HOME/.config/zellij/multitask_layout.kdl` when invoking the plugin. The layout you use should open .multitask in an edit pane (this filename will be replaced with multitask_file_name automatically if applicable, see below for details). The default layout can be found at src/assets/multitask_layout.kdl for inspiration.
multitask_file_name	The name of the multitask file. This can be used to point to a multitask file that already exists or provide a specific name for a new multitask file. If no name is provided, then the multitask file name will be .multiask# where # is the plugin ID number.

Starting from a keybind

It may be desirable to start multitask via a keybind. However, since users often want ccwd=`pwd` when starting the plugin, it can't be done with a simple keybind. Instead, it is recommended you put the command you use to launch the plugin into a bash script, and then invoke that bash script via a keybind. An example bash script may look like:

#!/bin/bash

zellij action start-or-reload-plugin file:$HOME/.zellij_plugins/multitask.wasm --configuration shell="/bin/zsh,ccwd=`pwd`,layout=`cat $HOME/.config/zellij/multitask_layout.kdl`"
zellij action close-pane

Suppose this script is called open_multitask and is located somewhere on your PATH, e.g., ~/.local/bin, then you can add a keybind like

normal {
    bind "Alt m" { Run "open_multitask"; }
}

to start multitask.

Development

Load the dev.kdl layout from inside zellij: zellij action new-tab -l dev.kdl or from outside Zellij with zellij -l dev.kdl