The rmate program enables editing files on a remote computer with TextMate 2 via an SSH connection. This is a port of the official Ruby version and was made for system that cannot (or just preferably do not) have Ruby installed. This version (very intentionally) has no dependencies beyond the Python standard library and has been tested with Python versions 2.4 - 3.5.

This port is probably compatible with Sublime Text, Atom, or other editors that use the rmate protocol, but it is not officially tested.

rmate is a single file script, so you can simply download it to a location in your PATH. For example, assuming /usr/local/bin is in the PATH

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sclukey/rmate-python/master/bin/rmate
chmod +x ./rmate
mv ./rmate /usr/local/bin/rmate

You can also install rmate with pip

pip install rmate

For rmate to be able to connect back to TextMate, a port must be tunneled through the ssh connection. By default, rmate uses port 52698, and the port can be tunneled for an individual connection on the command line :

ssh -R 52698:localhost:52698 [email protected]

or for all connections by adding a rule to your ~/.ssh/config

Host *
RemoteForward 52698 localhost:52698

You can use rmate --help to see the usage

usage: rmate [OPTION]... FILE...

      --host HOST  Connect to HOST. Use 'auto' to detect the host from
                   SSH. Defaults to localhost
  -p, --port PORT  Port number to use for connection. Defaults to 52698
  -w, --[no-]wait  Wait for file to be closed by TextMate
  -l, --line LINE  Place carat on line LINE after loading the file.
                   TextMate selection strings can be used
  -m, --name NAME  The display name shown in TextMate
  -t, --type TYPE  Treat file as having TYPE
  -f, --force      Open even if the file is not writable
  -v, --verbose    Verbose logging messages
  -h, --help       Show this help and exit
      --version    Show version and exit

When FILE is -, read standard input.

More information can be found in this blog post