How to use Sublime over SSH

I'm trying to use Sublime Text 2 as an editor when I SSH in to my work server, and I'm stumped. I found this http://urbangiraffe.com/2011/08/13/remote-editing-with-sublime-text-2/ (among many other posts) that looks like it might help, but I don't follow it exactly, particularly with what values I should put in for the remote variable in line 5. I set "/Users/path/to/local/copy" to my local root directory, but I don't know if that's right or if there's more to do. Any thoughts? I'm on OSX10.8

There are three ways:

• Use SFTP plugin (commercial) http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/sftp - I personally recommend this, as after settings public SSH keys with passphrase it is safe, easy and worth every penny http://opensourcehacker.com/2012/10/24/ssh-key-and-passwordless-login-basics-for-developers/

• Mount the remote as local file system using osxfuse and sshfs as mentioned in the comments. This might be little difficult, depending on OSX version and your skills with UNIX file systems.

• Hack together something like rmate which does file editing over remote tunneling using some kind of a local daemon (very difficult, cumbersome, but sudo compatible) http://blog.macromates.com/2011/mate-and-rmate/

Also, in theory, you can install X11 on the remote server and run Sublime there over VNC or X11 forwarding, but there would be no point doing this.

You can use rsub, which is inspired on TextMate's rmate. From the description:

Rsub is an implementation of TextMate 2's 'rmate' feature for Sublime Text 2, allowing files to be edited on a remote server using SSH port forwarding / tunnelling.

Here's a good tutorial on how to set it up properly.

I'm on Windows and have used 4 methods: SFTP, WinSCP, Unison and Sublime Text on Linux with X11 forwarding over SSH to Windows (yes you can do this without messy configs and using a free tool).

The fourth way is the best if you can install software on your Linux machine.

The fourth way:

MobaXterm

1. Install MobaXterm on Windows
2. SSH to your Linux box from MobaXterm
3. On your linux box, install Sublime Text 3. Here's how to on Ubuntu
4. At the command prompt, start sublime with subl
5. That's it! You now have sublime text running on Linux, but with its window running on your Windows desktop. This is possible because MobaXterm handles the X11 forwarding over SSH for you so you don't have to do anything funky to get it going. There might be a teeny amount of a delay, but your files will never be out of sync, because you're editing them right on the Linux machine.

Note: When invoking subl if it complains for a certain library - ensure you install them to successfully invoke sublimetext from mobaxterm.

If you can't install software on your Linux box, the best is Unison. Why?

• It's free
• It's fast
• It's reliable and doesn't care which editor you use
• You can create custom ignore lists

SFTP

Setup: Install the SFTP Sublime Text package. This package requires a license.

1. Create a new folder
2. Open it as a Sublime Text Project.
3. In the sidebar, right click on the folder and select Map Remote.
4. Edit the sftp-config.json file
5. Right click the folder in step 1 select download.
6. Work locally.

In the sftp-config, I usually set:

"upload_on_save": true,
"sync_down_on_open": true,

This, in addition to an SSH terminal to the machine gives me a fairly seamless remote editing experience.

WinSCP

1. Install and run WinSCP
2. Go to Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+P) and click on Transfer, then on Add. Name the preset.
3. Set the transfer mode to binary (you don't want line conversions)
4. Set file modification to "No change"
5. Click the Edit button next to File Mask and setup your include and exclude files and folders (useful for when you have a .git/.svn folder present or you want to exclude build products from being synchronized).
6. Click OK
7. Connect to your remote server and navigate to the folder of interest
8. Choose an empty folder on your local machine.
9. Select your newly created Transfer settings preset.
10. Finally, hit Ctrl+U (Commands > Keep remote directory up to date) and make sure "Synchronize on start" and "Update subdirectories" are checked.

From then on, WinSCP will keep your changes synchronized.

Work in the local folder using SublimeText. Just make sure that Sublime Text is set to guess the line endings from the file that is being edited.

Unison

I have found that if source tree is massive (around a few hundred MB with a deep hierarchy), then the WinSCP method described above might be a bit slow. You can get much better performance using Unison. The down side is that Unison is not automatic (you need to trigger it with a keypress) and requires a server component to be running on your linux machine. The up side is that the transfers are incredibly fast, it is very reliable and ignoring files, folders and extensions are incredibly easy to setup.