Subject: making GNU screen, bash and vim work with a new X server

I have the same problem, and solved it with a few nasty hacks.

I want to keep GNU screen, with bash and vim, running nicely
when I start a new X server and the DISPLAY number changes.
(We are using Xming on Windows with a Linux server on the LAN).

There's no 'nice' way to do this, as far as I can tell.

My hacky solution reloads DISPLAY from a file each time you press enter in bash,
and provides a :R = Restart() command in vim, so I can easily restart vim
with a new DISPLAY, but preserving the current session  (files, windows, etc.).
It also provides a default --servername (process ID).

I'm somewhat embarrassed to post this!


0. Make a ~/tmp directory:

    mkdir -p ~/tmp

1. In my .bash_profile  (local):

    echo "DISPLAY='$DISPLAY'" >~/.session-env

2. In my .bashrc  (local):

    export PROMPT_COMMAND='source ~/.session-env'

3. Wrapper script for vim / vi, put it in e.g. $HOME/bin:

    #!/bin/bash
    export vim_session=$$
    export vim_restart_file="$HOME/tmp/vim-restart-$vim_session"
    VIM="/usr/bin/vim --servername $vim_session"
    $VIM "$@"
    while [ -e "$vim_restart_file" ]; do
        source ~/.session-env
        tmp="$vim_restart_file.tmp"
        mv "$vim_restart_file" "$tmp"
        $VIM -S "$tmp" "$@"
        rm -f "$tmp"
    done

4. In my .vimrc:

    function! Restart()
        let $DISPLAY=''
        exe "mksession ".$vim_restart_file
        :xa
    endfun

    command! R call Restart()


Well, it's a bit complicated, but it does seem to work!