Tmux is a great terminal multiplexer. Tmux installed via the package manager is often too old. So I decided to install the latest version of Tmux that supports true colors from source. Since I do not have root privilege on the system, I have to build Tmux and install it under my HOME. If that is also what you want, keep reading.

Tmux has two dependencies: libevent and ncurses. We have to build and install these two libraries first.

Build libevent#

First, we use the following script to build and install libevent:

wget https://github.com/libevent/libevent/releases/download/release-2.1.11-stable/libevent-2.1.11-stable.tar.gz
tar zxvf libevent-2.1.11-stable.tar.gz
cd libevent-2.1.11-stable
mkdir -p $HOME/local
# install libevent under $HOME/local
./configure --prefix="$HOME/local"
make -j && make install

Libevent will be install to $HOME/local.

Build ncurses#

We also need to build ncurses library:

wget https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/ncurses-6.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf ncurses-6.2.tar.gz
cd ncurses-6.2/
./configure --prefix="$HOME/local"
make -j&& make install

The above command will install ncurses under $HOME/local.

Build Tmux#

Finally, we download the latest Tmux release tar ball from GitHub and build it:

wget https://github.com/tmux/tmux/releases/download/3.1b/tmux-3.1b.tar.gz
tar zxvf tmux-3.1b.tar.gz
cd tmux-3.1b
# the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS are important, make sure you have written them correctly, or the build will fail
./configure --prefix=$HOME/local \
    CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/local/include -I$HOME/local/include/ncurses" \
    LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/local/lib"
make -j && make install

After running the above commands, Tmux will be installed to $HOME/local. The tmux executable is under $HOME/local/bin.

Post install#

We need to add Tmux executable to env variable PATH.

export PATH="$HOME/local/bin:$PATH"

After building Tmux, we should also update the env variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include the libevent and libncurses shared object directory:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

Or you may meet the following error when starting tmux:

tmux: error while loading shared libraries: libevent-2.1.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Now, you can use the latest Tmux and configure it as you wish. You may also be interested in the following posts:

• configure tmux to support true color.
• Tmux questions and trouble shootings.
• Vim like settings for Tmux.
• Tmux install and management.

The complete script to build Tmux are shown below.

# Build libevent
wget https://github.com/libevent/libevent/releases/download/release-2.1.11-stable/libevent-2.1.11-stable.tar.gz
tar zxvf libevent-2.1.11-stable.tar.gz
cd libevent-2.1.11-stable
mkdir -p $HOME/local
# install libevent under $HOME/local
./configure --prefix="$HOME/local"
make -j && make install
cd ..

# Build ncurses
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/ncurses-6.2.tar.gz
tar zxvf ncurses-6.2.tar.gz
cd ncurses-6.2/
./configure --prefix="$HOME/local"
make -j&& make install
cd ..

# Build Tmux
wget https://github.com/tmux/tmux/releases/download/3.1b/tmux-3.1b.tar.gz
tar zxvf tmux-3.1b.tar.gz
cd tmux-3.1b
# the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS are important, make sure you have written them correctly, or the build will fail
./configure --prefix=$HOME/local \
    CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/local/include -I$HOME/local/include/ncurses" \
    LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/local/lib"
make -j && make install

References#

• Build libevent.
• Build Tmux from source.
• Tmux readme: https://github.com/tmux/tmux