Pair Programming With SSH and Tmux

In the beginning was the machine...

First of all you need a machine which meets the following requirements:

• it has a ssh server installed;
• both participants have ssh access to it with the same user;
• it has tmux installed;
• it has all other tools that you will need to do what you intend to do(compiler, debugger, editor etc.) with the restriction that they must be command line tools

This machine can be a server that you both have access to(e.g. VPS in the cloud) or the computer of one of the participants if you are in the same network.

Usage

I will refer to the two participants as Alice and Bob.

One shared session

Alice and Bob both ssh's into the common machine:

ssh user@common_machine

Then Alice runs:

tmux new -s shared_sess

And Bob runs:

tmux attach -t shared_sess

Now when Alice writes something in the terminal Bob will see it and when Bob writes something Alice will see it.

But they can't work at the same time while in the shared session, only one can be active.

If this isn't desired see next setup.

One session per participant

Alice and Bob both ssh's into the common machine:

ssh user@common_machine

Then Alice runs:

tmux new -s alice_sess

And Bob runs:

tmux attach -s bob_sess -t alice_sess

Now both Alice and Bob have their own session but each can access the session of the other one.

This means that they can work at the same time but can still see what the other is doing and do stuff in the other one's session.