Reproducing your preferred panel arrangement inside your terminal can be time-consuming. Not only that – it's repetitive work, the archenemy of every programmer.
![notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2Fb929e881-1e82-4996-a745-508be47c8fc9%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=70de8372-2ef6-48f7-a0c3-fdeb4587d42f&cache=v2)
![notion image](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2F81eb0c69-1e80-4d2e-b23f-1dbde149f3bc%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=cbf35767-a004-48b2-860f-5453f511a297&cache=v2)
Introducing hyperlayout, a configurable & command-triggered layout tool for Hyper™. It works globally or on a per-project basis.
![Example of using hyperlayout](https://www.notion.so/image/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fsecure.notion-static.com%2F43e6d2e6-83bc-47ad-bc8f-3de74adf773e%2FUntitled.png?table=block&id=d4a99bee-ca0e-40e8-a2b6-95b36938350f&cache=v2)
Motivation
While developing owe.zone I found it bothersome to start working on it because I had to:
- Start the MongoDB instance
- Start gulp to watch & compile
- Start the API itself
- Start the Next.js front-end
- Leave two panels empty to run commands in – all in the right directory
I was using Hyper, which is known to be extensible to the core – so I why not build a plugin which does all the work for me.
The task turned out harder than expected. The main hurdle was the algorithm, which converts the config file into a queue of commands so Hyper can execute them and yield the correct layout.
It took three days and a lot of coffee to get the first version released. Since then hundreds of developers have downloaded hyperlayout.
Then I discovered docker-compose
I got quite comfortable with using Docker and docker-compose. It made me realize that most of the things I listed above are solved by using it. Since then I haven't touched hyperlayout a lot – that's the sad reason why I longer maintain it.