I am Tony Narlock

This is my professional website. I’ve been a software developer for over 17 years. If you’re not in the field, what I do might not make much sense to you.

I work at tech startups, building web-based applications. On the frontend, I use React, TypeScript, and Relay (GraphQL), and on the backend, Python and Amazon Web Services.

In my spare time, I plan, develop, and maintain a suite of developer tools. For instance, tmuxp, which constructs tmux sessions from a JSON or YAML file. A few years ago, I also wrote a book about tmux, titled “The Tao of tmux”. Another tool I’ve created is cihai, based on Unicode’s UNIHAN dataset, which supports Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages.

I actively contribute to open-source software projects. You can find me on GitHub, GitLab, CodersRank, and OpenHub.

My CV documents everything I’ve ever done - professional work, my projects, and open-source contributions (I’m a polyglot; there’s even some C++ in there).

What’s going on in my life as a programmer

What am I busy with outside of work?

• February 2024:

  • libtmux: Support for context managers have landed in v0.44.0, enabling automatic cleanup of servers, sessions, windows, and panes in tmux.

• January 2025:

  • social-embed: Began overhauling of embed providers to be extendable.

• December 2024:

  • CV overhauled

  • social-embed: Experiment with new doc gen and package manager:

    • Documentation: Moved from docusaurus to starlight, an Astro-based documentation generator.

    • Package manager: Moved from yarn classic to pnpm.

• November 2024:

  • Migrated Python projects from poetry to uv, a new Rust-based package and project manager.

    It’s impressive to see Rust revitalizing tooling in Python and Node.js. What might come next?

  • unihan-etl: v0.35.0 (diff)

    Updated to UNIHAN @ Revision 37.

• October 2024:

  Faster test fixtures:

  • libvcs: v0.33.0 (diff): 50% faster.

    • vcspull: v1.32.0 (diff): 33% faster.

  Additional improvements to pytest fixtures are expected, along with significant enhancements like new options and hooks support in libtmux.

• June 2024:

  • libvcs: v0.30.1 (diff): Support for AWS CodeCommit URLs.

  • CV: Added sidebar of years, track current year in top menu while scrolling.

• April-June 2024:

  • libtmux: Working on options and hooks: libtmux#516

• March 2024:

  • libtmux refactoring continues

    • v0.33.0 (diff): Improved new session creation and window splitting.

    • v0.34.0-v0.35.0 (diff): Improved .cmd() in respect to targets.

  • Automated fixes via ruff

    Machine-made refactors rendering consistent, tight python code:

    • unihan-etl: v0.34.0 (diff)

    • libvcs: v0.29.0 (diff)

    • vcspull: v1.30.0 (diff)

    • libtmux: v0.36.0 (diff)

    • tmuxp: v1.45.0 (diff)

• February 2024: Busman’s holiday

  • libtmux: v0.31.0 (diff)

    • API streamlining (e.g., Pane.select_pane() -> Pane.select())

    • Up next: Options and hooks: libtmux#516

  • CV: Add timeline to pull requests

  • unihan-etl:

    • v0.31.0 (diff): Support updated from UNIHAN at Unicode 11.0.0 (May 2018) to 15.1.0 (Sept 2023), via unihan-etl#309.

    • v0.32.0 (diff): Highlight examples on the front page: unihan-etl#253, unihan-etl#314.

    • v0.33.0 (diff): Lint improvements, fix CSV highlighting.

• January 2024:

  • CV: Move to Tailwind (cv#1674, diff)

• December 2023:

  • Moved my CV and social-embed project to oxlint biome, a Rust-based linter and formatter:

    • CV: cv#1667 (diff) cv#1668 (diff)

    • social-embed: social-embed#26 (diff) social-embed#27 (diff)

  • Documented even more projects w/ ruff’s pydocstyle linter:

    • cihai: v0.30.0 (diff)

    • cihai-cli: v0.25.0 (diff)

    • unihan-db: v0.14.0 (diff)

    • django-slugify-processor: v1.6.0 (diff)

    • g: v0.0.3 (diff)

    • vcspull: v1.26.0 (diff)

    • tmuxp: v1.33.0 (diff)

• November 2023

  • social-embed: Upgraded website from docusaurus v2 to v3 (diff).

  • Linted project documentation with pydocstyle + ruff:

    • libtmux: v0.25.0 (diff)

    • libvcs: v0.26.0 (diff)

    • unihan-etl: v0.30.0 (diff)

• October 2023 - Overhauled django-docutils

  django-docutils - a django package for reStructuredText - is being dusted off.

  • v0.15.0 (diff) introduces:

    • Renamed template tags / filters from restructuredtext to rst

    • Enabled template tags to accept block content, e.g.

      {% load django_docutils %}
      {% rst %}
      **my bold text**
      {% endrst %}
      

    • Added test coverage for template tags and template engine.

  • v0.19.0 (diff): Typings for settings, cleanup, documentation

  This package, originally part of a blog that combined django ORM + django views + intersphinx, remained unused in the attic until last month. It is now known as django-docutils.

• Late September 2023 - More mypy --strict compliant typings

  • django-docutils: v0.14.0 (diff)

  • tmuxp: v1.31.0 (diff)

• Early September 2023 - More quality improvements

  • tmuxp: v1.30.0 (diff)

  • vcspull: v1.22.0 (diff)

• August 2023 - Continued quality improvements

  Building upon the improvements made to ruff in July 2023, the following additional projects have now been revitalized:

  • libtmux: v0.23.0 (diff)

  • libvcs: v0.23.0 (diff)

• August 2023 - CV Website updated

  • Dark mode

  • Renewed design with CSS variables

• July 2023 - Improved Quality Standards

  This enhances the maintainability of projects by employing ruff, a Python linter/fixer developed in Rust:

  • unihan-etl: v0.25.0 (diff)

  • cihai: v0.26.0 (diff)

  • cihai-cli: v0.21.0 (diff)

  • unihan-db: v0.11.0 (diff)

• June 2023 - social-embed moved to vite.

  P.S. cihai updates ongoing (updated below)

• May-June 2023 - cihai is being revamped

  After over 5 years of inactivity, this suite of packages has been revived.

  cihai updates:

  • May 25th, 2023 - 0.20.0: Adds mypy --strict compliant typings

  • June 3rd, 2023 - 0.21.0: Migrate from SQLAlchemy v1.3 to SQLAlchemy v2.0

  cihai-cli updates:

  • June 4th, 2023: 0.17.0: Introduced mypy --strict compliant typings and transitioned from SQLAlchemy 1.3 to SQLAlchemy 2.0.

  unihan-etl updates:

  • June 12th, 2023: 0.21.0: Move to pathlib, type callbacks via typing.Protocol.

  • June 17th, 2023: 0.22.0:

    • Add doctest support

    • Configuration: Move options from dict to typed dataclass object.

    • Docs: Split API documentation into multiple pages

    • Move unihan_etl.process -> unihan_etl.core

  unihan-db updates:

  • June 10th, 2023: 0.9.0: mypy --strict compliant typings and migrate from SQLAlchemy 1.3 to SQLAlchemy 2.0

  In the future, cihai projects will have:

  • SQLAlchemy updated to 1.4, then 2.0+ Completed

  • Typings, for improved maintainability and completions

  • Doctests for tested examples

  • unihan-etl and cihai will have their own pytest plugins for bootstrapping a UNIHAN.zip and reusing it throughout the test session.

  • In the medium to longterm: Simpler and stable APIs

• December 2022 - I’m not giving up being successful

  In 2023:

  • Snappable, expressive configurations will enliven tmuxp and vcspull

    Dataclasses will resemble the structure of the:

    • libtmux: tmux session, and

    • libvcs: the file paths of the user’s repository checkouts

  • My oldest library - libtmux - will be renewed with dataclasses, documentation, and improve tests

• September 2022 - One more thing on doctest

  I wrote a doctest module that can parse reStructuredText and markdown:

  Doctest w/ docutils

  It also has a pytest plugin

  On that note, I also made a pytest plugin for libtmux and libvcs:

  • tmux pytest plugin - bootstrap tmux sessions in your tests

  • libvcs pytest plugin - setup and teardown git, mercurial and subversion repos in your tests.

• Mid August 2022 - Promises keep coming

  Additionally, test and quality infrastructure has been improved across all projects:

  • libtmux now has comprehensive typings (--strict mypy compliance) as of 0.13.0

  • All projects except vcspull now have basic mypy and doctest support.

• Early August 2022 - Promises kept (and keep coming)

  libvcs 0.14.0 released w/ typing annotations and doctests.

  Also, added a URL Parser (compare to urlparse) for git, hg, and svn URLs. Extensible using framework tools. Built on dataclasses and uses doctest.

  In the process, “side inventions” (License MIT):

  • QueryList: Nested searching of dict-like data.

  • SubprocessCommand: Deferrable subprocess commands.

  • SkipDefaultFieldsReprMixin: Exclude default fields (useful for clearer pytest assertions / printing). Thanks Pietro Oldrati.

• June 2022

  • libvcs and vcspull are being rebuilt from the ground up. This will be a fresh take on one of my earliest python projects. What they’ll be using:

    • doctest: actual code demo in documentation which also function as tests

    • mypy: type checking through annotations (PEP 484, PEP 526)

    • dataclasses (experimental): As a library creator, I will put these to the test

    The projects will be a proving ground for quality standards and patterns I’ll adopt across my other and future packages.

• March 2022

  • All sites moved to new design.

• June 2021

  • tmux-python (tmuxp + libtmux), vcs-python (vcspull + libvcs), cihai (cihai, cihai-cli, unihan-etl, unihan-db) moved to markdown

• April 2021

  • Created @social-embed web component / library in TypeScript and LitElement: Homepage, GitHub

• Feb 2021

  • Experimenting with new CV: cv-react-v2.git-pull.com

See more

Publications

The Tao of tmux

Available on Leanpub and Kindle (Amazon). Read the book for free on the web.

Language Projects

cihai

United front for creating open, permissive, standardized CJK datasets.

HSK FlashCards

Study chinese flashcards for Hànyǔ Shuǐpíng Kǎoshì, (New) Practical Chinese Reader and Integrated Chinese

Unix-like Utilities

tmuxp (中文)

tmux session manager via JSON and YAML file

libtmux

pilot tmux with python

vcspull

manage and update multiple git / hg / svn projects via JSON or YAML file

libvcs

pythonic API for version control systems

Coding around the web

• My ports for the FreeBSD operating system on portscout

• My issues for FreeBSD in Bugzilla

• Software porting from Linux to BSD on my FreeBSD Wiki Page

• Unofficial tally / roster of open source contributions on OpenHub

• GitHub @tony for recent / current coding

Porting (Linux-to-BSD)

• Elementary Algorithms – Book of Elementary Algorithms and Data structures #16

• pymux – tmux(1) clone in python #34

• aseprite – Cross-platform sprite / pixel art editor #888 #893

• tmux-mem-cpu-load memory, CPU and load averages for tmux status lines #30

• uMario_Jakowski – Super Mario NES clone in SDL2 and C++. Add CMake and get building on FreeBSD and OS X #1

• spdlog - C++11 logger #254

• python-cmake-buildsystem - CMake buildsystem for CPython #133 #136

• nanogui - C++11 gui library for opengl #128 #147

• pyston - An open-source Python implementation using JIT techniques #1072, #1073, #1085

• libpypa - Python parser implemented in pure C++ #50

Scrapyard

Experimental code / patches that never made it upstream:

kakoune branches: cmake build support, mini, new-cli (#693), observers, rm-server (serverless kakoune), pybind11 and Boost.Python integration

vis branches: cmake support, C++ support, python integration

sphinx branches: flexible-builder invocation

tmux branches: cmake build support

saltstack + fabric demo: gist

Project templates

Permissively licensed starter templates you can use to bootstrap your projects.

These are mostly outdated

Frontend

• react-typescript-vanilla-starter: Webpack v4

• vue-typescript-vanilla-starter: Vue 2.x, Webpack v4

Cookiecutter

• cookiecutter-pypackage - Bootstrap python packages

• cookiecutter-flask-pythonic - Flask project

Presentations

• Guest Speaker @ Fullstack Academy (YC S12) at 1871 (Feb 2017)

• Guangzhou LUG software freedom day @ Sun Yat-sen University (May 2013)

Industry and Press

• Opensource.com mentions The Tao of tmux (Feb 2017)

• Japanese tech blog mentions The Tao of tmux (Jan 2017)

• Bugsnag Engineering using tmuxp (Nov 2016)

• Pragmatic Coders dev shop on configuring tmux sessions with tmuxp (Dec 2015)

• tmuxp featured on OneThingWell Nov 2013 and June 2014

Code Exploration

• Django vs Flask

• Where is python module development happening?

• reST, docutils, sphinx, readthedocs (Updated Feb 09, 2015)

• Python packaging, relative modules and cyclic dependencies

Other

• Badass leather / 牛 B 皮革 - PSA on why leather is cool

Donate

Like my open source projects and learning resources? Your support is appreciated!

Emboldening virtue, the Junzi

• To be a righteous person (君子 jūn zǐ), as opposed to (小人 xiăorén)

What makes a good gentleman-scholar in Confucius’ eyes?

• Be coherent: “How did we get here?”, “How do these things connect?”

• Tolerate ambiguity

• Treat matters in proportion to the issue

• Secure attachment