exe-scroll is a small terminal session multiplexer in the spirit of dtach, abduco, and zmx, written in Zig. It hosts a PTY-backed command behind a Unix socket so you can attach and detach without disturbing the program — and it uses Ghostty's ghostty-vt terminal emulator to keep scrollback, so reattaching repaints the screen (and optional history) exactly: colors, styles, cursor and all.

Usage

The default invocation takes a single argument — a path for the session socket — and attaches to it if a live session is there, otherwise creates it:

# Create (no session yet): runs $SHELL behind /tmp/work/session.sock.
exe-scroll /tmp/work/session.sock
# ...later, from anywhere: attach to the same session.
exe-scroll /tmp/work/session.sock
# Create with an explicit command (everything after `--` is the command).
exe-scroll /tmp/work/session.sock -- bash -l

Detach (leaving the session running) by sending the attach client SIGUSR2:

kill -USR2 <pid-of-exe-scroll>

The session keeps running; reattach later with the same command.

Telling the processes apart

Each session involves a backgrounded session server (owns the pty and scrollback) and one attach client per attachment. They rewrite their command line so ps shows which is which:

$ ps -o pid,command
  4258 exe-scroll: attach /tmp/work/session.sock
  2976 exe-scroll: session /tmp/work/session.sock

So the session line is the one to send SIGUSR1 (recreate socket), and an attach line is the one to send SIGUSR2 (detach).

Options

Options may appear before or after the socket path.

Building

make                                        # -> zig-out/bin/exe-scroll
make test                                   # build + run the test suite

License

MIT (see LICENSE).