WezTerm Auto-Save Fix: Resurrect Plugin Troubleshooting

Hey WezTerm Warriors! Battling Auto-Save Blues with Resurrect.wezterm

Alright, WezTerm users, let's dive into a super common, yet incredibly frustrating, issue many of us encounter: when your manual saves with a plugin like resurrect.wezterm work flawlessly, but that sweet, sweet auto-save feature seems to have gone on vacation. You know the drill, right? You've meticulously set up your wezterm.lua config, you've got your keybindings ready to snapshot your perfect workspace, and when you hit that manual save key, everything just works. Your sessions are saved, your tabs are preserved, and life is good. But then, you restart WezTerm, hoping for that seamless return to your last session without lifting a finger, and… nada. It's like the auto-save just completely missed the memo. This can be a real productivity killer, forcing you to manually manage your sessions, which kinda defeats the purpose of having such a powerful terminal emulator and a dedicated session management plugin like resurrect.wezterm in the first place! We're talking about bringing back all those open files, command histories, and terminal layouts exactly where you left them. The resurrect.wezterm plugin, developed by MLFlexer, is truly a game-changer for WezTerm session management, offering robust capabilities to save and restore entire workspaces, individual windows, or specific tabs. It's designed to make your development workflow smoother and prevent the heartache of lost work. In this comprehensive guide, we're going to roll up our sleeves, explore the ins and outs of your WezTerm configuration, and pinpoint exactly why your auto-save might be giving you the cold shoulder. We'll break down the Lua config, understand the event-driven saves, and most importantly, show you how to implement a truly robust periodic auto-save mechanism so you can get back to what you do best: coding, creating, and conquering without worrying about losing your terminal setup.

Diving Deep into Your WezTerm Configuration: The Core Setup

Before we tackle the auto-save conundrum, let's first get a solid understanding of your WezTerm configuration file, wezterm.lua. This file is the heart of your WezTerm experience, where you customize everything from visual aesthetics to powerful keybindings and plugin integrations. Looking at your provided configuration, you've done a great job setting up the foundational elements that make WezTerm feel like your terminal. First off, you're pulling in the wezterm API using local wezterm = require 'wezterm', which is the standard way to interact with WezTerm's extensive features. Then, you initialize your configuration with local config = wezterm.config_builder(), preparing to apply all your personalized settings. For appearance, you've chosen JetBrainsMono Nerd Font Mono as your config.font and set a config.font_size = 16, which is a fantastic choice for readability and developer comfort, ensuring your code looks crisp and clear. You've also fine-tuned config.line_height = 1.2 for better vertical spacing, making long lines of text easier to digest. The config.window_background_opacity = 0.90 adds a subtle transparency, giving your terminal a modern, sleek look without being too distracting – a perfect balance for many users. Beyond aesthetics, you've also defined the initial dimensions for new windows with config.initial_cols = 120 and config.initial_rows = 28, ensuring you always start with a generously sized terminal window, ready for multi-panel layouts or extensive output. Later in your config, we see a brief override for config.font_size = 10 and config.color_scheme = 'ayu', which suggests some experimentation or specific use cases; it's worth noting these overrides will take precedence. The really exciting part for session management is the integration of the resurrect.wezterm plugin. You're loading it directly from GitHub using local resurrect = wezterm.plugin.require("https://github.com/MLFlexer/resurrect.wezterm"). This line is critical because it makes all the powerful resurrect functions available within your configuration, enabling you to save and restore your WezTerm sessions effortlessly. This setup ensures that all subsequent calls to resurrect's functions are properly linked to the plugin, laying the groundwork for both your working manual saves and our quest to fix the auto-save behavior. Understanding these core configuration aspects is the first step in debugging any deeper issues, as it confirms that WezTerm itself is properly configured and the resurrect plugin is correctly loaded and ready for action.

The Magic of Manual Saves: Your WezTerm Keybindings Explained

Now, let's talk about the part of your setup that is working like a charm: your manual save keybindings. This is where you, the user, explicitly tell WezTerm and the resurrect.wezterm plugin to capture your current state. It's fantastic that these commands are responding correctly, as it confirms that the resurrect plugin is loaded, its functions are accessible, and the underlying state management mechanisms are operational. You've implemented a comprehensive set of keybindings for granular control over what gets saved, which is a testament to the flexibility of resurrect.wezterm and WezTerm's wezterm.action_callback feature. Let's break down each one: Firstly, you have { key = "w", mods = "ALT", action = wezterm.action_callback(function(win, pane) resurrect.state_manager.save_state(resurrect.workspace_state.get_workspace_state()) end), }. This powerful keybinding, ALT-w, is designed to save your entire current workspace state. When you press ALT-w, the callback function springs into action, retrieving the complete state of your current workspace—including all its windows, tabs, and panes—and then using resurrect.state_manager.save_state to persistently store this information. This is incredibly useful for capturing your full working environment, ensuring that when you restore, you pick up exactly where you left off across all your active projects. Next, you've got { key = "W", mods = "ALT", action = resurrect.window_state.save_window_action(), }. Notice the uppercase 'W' here. This ALT-W binding specifically targets and saves the state of your current window. This is a more focused save, perfect when you've made significant changes within a particular WezTerm window and want to ensure its layout and content are preserved without affecting other windows or workspaces. The save_window_action() directly leverages resurrect's capabilities for window-specific session management. Similarly, for even finer control, you've included { key = "T", mods = "ALT", action = resurrect.tab_state.save_tab_action(), }. The ALT-T keybinding focuses solely on saving the state of your current tab. If you're working on a single task within a tab and want to snapshot its particular configuration, this is your go-to. It ensures that the specific tab's history, running processes, and layout are saved independently. Finally, you have a combined save action: { key = "s", mods = "ALT", action = wezterm.action_callback(function(win, pane) resurrect.state_manager.save_state(resurrect.workspace_state.get_workspace_state()) resurrect.window_state.save_window_action() end), }. This ALT-s keybinding is a super handy combo. It first saves the entire workspace state (just like ALT-w), and then immediately follows up by saving the current window state (like ALT-W). This provides a broad and then a more specific save, covering both your overall project context and your immediate working area with a single keystroke. The fact that all these manual save actions are functioning perfectly is a huge indicator. It tells us that resurrect.wezterm is correctly integrated, its core saving logic is sound, and your WezTerm configuration is parsing and executing these Lua functions without issue. This successful operation of manual saves helps us narrow down the problem area: it's not the ability to save that's the issue, but rather how and when the auto-save is supposed to be triggered that needs our attention.

Restoring Your WezTerm Sessions: Bringing Everything Back to Life

Beyond just saving, the true power of resurrect.wezterm lies in its ability to bring your sessions back from the digital abyss. Restoring your WezTerm sessions is just as critical as saving them, and your configuration includes a sophisticated mechanism for doing just that. You've set up a dynamic keybinding for ALT-r that provides a flexible, fuzzy-finding interface to load any previously saved state—be it a workspace, a window, or even a specific tab. This means you're not just restoring a generic state, but precisely the context you need at any given moment. Let's break down this powerful restoration keybinding: You have { key = "r", mods = "ALT", action = wezterm.action_callback(function(win, pane) resurrect.fuzzy_loader.fuzzy_load(win, pane, function(id, label) ... end) end), }. When you press ALT-r, this triggers resurrect.fuzzy_loader.fuzzy_load. This function is absolutely brilliant because it presents you with an interactive list of all your saved states. You can then fuzzy search through them, selecting exactly which session you want to bring back. Once you select an item, a callback function is executed, and this is where the magic truly happens. Inside this callback, the id of the selected state is carefully parsed. You're cleverly extracting the type of the saved state (e.g., "workspace", "window", or "tab") and the actual id (the name of the saved file) using string.match. This parsing is crucial for directing the resurrect plugin to the correct restoration function. For instance, local type = string.match(id, "^([^/]+)") grabs the category, and id = string.match(id, "([^/]+){{content}}quot;) gets the unique identifier, followed by id = string.match(id, "(.+)%..+{{content}}quot;) to remove any file extension, ensuring a clean ID for loading. After identifying the type, a set of opts (options) is defined for the restoration process: { relative = true, restore_text = true, on_pane_restore = resurrect.tab_state.default_on_pane_restore, }. These options are super important: relative = true often means the state will be restored relative to your current working directory if possible, which is incredibly handy. restore_text = true ensures that not just the layout, but also the actual command output and history within your terminal panes are brought back, making for a truly seamless return to your previous work. And on_pane_restore = resurrect.tab_state.default_on_pane_restore specifies a default callback to execute after a pane is restored, ensuring proper post-restoration handling. Based on the type parsed from the id, the appropriate resurrect function is then called: If type == "workspace", it loads the workspace state using resurrect.state_manager.load_state(id, "workspace") and then restores it with resurrect.workspace_state.restore_workspace(state, opts). This brings back your entire working context. If type == "window", it loads the window state and restores it to the current WezTerm window using resurrect.window_state.restore_window(pane:window(), state, opts). And finally, if type == "tab", it loads the tab state and restores it to the current WezTerm tab using resurrect.tab_state.restore_tab(pane:tab(), state, opts). This comprehensive restoration mechanism, powered by fuzzy_loader, makes managing multiple projects and contexts incredibly efficient. The fact that this manual restoration is also working confirms that the saved state files are valid and resurrect's loading functions are performing as expected. This distinction between manual save/restore and the auto-save functionality is key to our troubleshooting, as it tells us the core resurrect plugin is healthy, and the issue lies in the auto-triggering aspect.

The Elusive Auto-Save: Where Things Go Sideways

Alright, guys, this is where the auto-save mystery truly begins. You've got your manual saves dialed in, your restorations are slick, but that automatic saving just isn't happening. Let's scrutinize the sections of your configuration that are meant to handle automatic saving and restoration. We need to identify any gaps or misunderstandings that might be preventing that seamless, background saving you're looking for. Your current configuration includes a few event-driven hooks related to state management, particularly around workspace switching and GUI startup: First up, we have wezterm.on("smart_workspace_switcher.workspace_switcher.created", function(window, path, label) ... end). This event listener is designed to kick in whenever a new workspace is created via a smart workspace switcher. Inside this function, resurrect.workspace_state.restore_workspace is called. This means that when you create a new workspace using this specific switcher, resurrect attempts to load a previously saved workspace state associated with that label. While this is fantastic for automatically setting up newly created workspaces, it's important to note that this is a restoration action, not a saving action. It brings back a state, it doesn't create one. Next, you have wezterm.on("smart_workspace_switcher.workspace_switcher.selected", function(window, path, label) ... end). This listener fires when a workspace is selected through the smart workspace switcher. Crucially, this is where a save operation is implemented: resurrect.state_manager.save_state(workspace_state.get_workspace_state()). This means that whenever you switch away from a workspace using the smart_workspace_switcher, your current workspace state is automatically saved. This is a form of auto-save, but it's event-driven—it only happens when you actively switch workspaces. If you're staying in one workspace for a long time, or if you're not using the smart_workspace_switcher plugin, this particular auto-save mechanism won't trigger. Finally, there's wezterm.on("gui-startup", resurrect.state_manager.resurrect_on_gui_startup). This is a very important hook! The gui-startup event fires when WezTerm starts its graphical user interface. The resurrect_on_gui_startup function from resurrect.wezterm is designed to automatically load the last saved global WezTerm state when the application launches. This is the mechanism that helps bring back your overall WezTerm layout (windows, tabs, etc.) when you restart the application. However, just like the created event, this is primarily a loading operation, not a saving one. It loads what was last saved, but it doesn't save your current state before WezTerm exits or periodically while it's running. The critical missing piece (and likely the source of your "auto-save not working" frustration) is the absence of a periodic, interval-based auto-save loop. While your configuration handles saves on workspace selection and loads on GUI startup and workspace creation, there's no explicit instruction for resurrect.wezterm to save your state every X seconds regardless of whether you're switching workspaces or exiting the application. The comment ---@param opts? {interval_seconds: 30} floating near the end of your config snippet hints at this expectation, but it's not actually applied to any active auto-save function call. This is the core reason why your