I love i3, and often have multiple split panes open when working on a project. I got tired of opening a new pane and having to cd to the directory I was in.
I came across a lot of proposed solutions, but they were all too complicated or didn’t work. Here’s my hack.
Note: I use roxterm. YMMV with other terms.
Step 1: Use bash’s PROMPT_COMMAND to keep track of your current directory
Bash provides an environment variable called PROMPT_COMMAND. The contents of this variable are executed as a regular Bash command just before Bash displays a prompt. (Source)
Add this line to your ~/.bash_profile:
export PROMPT_COMMAND="pwd > /tmp/whereami"
Now, your current working directory will be written to /tmp/whereami every time you hit enter in a shell:
$ cat /tmp/whereami
/home/aj/git/blog.soulshake.net/src/content/post
Step 2: Create a tiny shell script
In $HOME/.i3/i3_shell.sh:
#!/bin/bash
WHEREAMI=$(cat /tmp/whereami)
i3-sensible-terminal --directory="$WHEREAMI"
This just opens a new terminal in the directory located in /tmp/whereami.
(i3-sensible-terminal evaluates to $TERMINAL which evaluates to urxvt in my case.)
Step 3: Set up i3 bindsym to i3_shell.sh to open a new term
Add this line to your ~/.i3/config:
bindsym $mod+Return exec $HOME/.i3/i3_shell.sh
Reload i3 (Ctrl+meta+R). Now, new terminals should open in whatever directory you last pressed enter in.