Compiling screen from CVS on OSX for vertical split.

Lee — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:41:59 +0000

Screen in an amazing tool. The latest version from CVS adds an amazing feature to allow you to split screens vertically (previously you could only split horizontally), which is extremely nice if you have a widescreen monitor. The only problem is that the patch isn’t yet included in MacPorts or Fink for this feature.

Here’s how to fetch it from source, patch it and build it yourself on OSX (tested on 10.5.3). First we need to check out the source:

shell> cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.gnu.org:/sources/screen co screen

Next, we need to manually apply the patches from MacPorts (assuming you’ve used MacPorts before). First change into the screen directory and apply the following 3 patches:

shell> cd screen/src shell> patch < /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/ release/ports/sysutils/screen/files/patch-maxargs shell> patch < /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/ release/ports/sysutils/screen/files/patch-windowsize shell> patch < /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/ release/ports/sysutils/screen/files/patch-pty.c

(Each of those should be on one line, I had to split them up to make the wrapping better).

Now, configure using the same method as the macports:

shell> ./configure --enable-locale --enable-telnet --enable-colors256 --enable-rxct_osc

From there, you should be able to do a make and make install to get your screen up and running. Vertical-split is bound to ctrl+a – | (control-a and pipe) (substitute whatever your bind key is for ctrl+a). Then you can use ctrl+a – :resize to resize the window, where is x%, -x, +x or x. Here’s a screenshot of it in action:

:wq - blog » macports

Compiling screen from CVS on OSX for vertical split.