Tmux screen logging workaround

I really like tmux, its sexy, sleek, actively developed, and has amazing mouse support. I only had one problem (so far) with the transition from GNU screen: output logging.

GNU screen has an amazing config option that I used almost all the time:

logfile screenlogs/%S%Y%m%d-%n.log
deflog on
The problem is that tmux doesnt have the same option :( the closest thing I have seen is the "pipe-pane" option, but I couldnt find any way to automate that upon startup of tmux. I figured, well since tmux doesnt let me do it, maybe I can hack something together myself. And thats exactly what i did. I give to you...tmux output logging via the script command:

if [[ $TERM = "screen" ]] && [[ $(ps $PPID -o comm=) = "tmux" ]] ; then
logname="$(date '+%d.%m.%Y_%H:%M:%S').tmux.log"
mkdir $HOME/logs 2> /dev/null
script -t 1 $HOME/logs/${logname} bash -login
exit
fi 

The above code basically checks if the $TERM variable is set to "screen" (tmux does this by default) and then check if the parent PID's name is "tmux". then it sets up a logging environment and output everything to the logfile it specifies.

That code works for OSX, for your basic GNU linux setup try this instead:

if [[ $TERM = "screen" ]] && [[ $(ps -p $PPID -o comm=) = "tmux" ]]; then
logname="$(date '+%d.%m.%Y_%H:%M:%S').tmux.log"
mkdir $HOME/logs 2> /dev/null
script -f $HOME/logs/${logname}
exit
fi

All you have to do is put that code into your .profile or .bashrc/.bash_profile and you are good to go.

Enjoy!