An intelligent prompt for zsh or bash with status line (window title) support
(C) Martin Väth (martin at mvath.de). This project is under the BSD license 2.0 (“3-clause BSD license”). SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause
This is a collection of scripts which allow you to use an intelligent prompt for zsh or bash which also sets a corresponding hardstatus line (if your terminal supports it).
For a demo printing a simple default prompt, execute this in your shell:
printf '\e[0;33mme\e[36m@\e[32mhost\e[36m(my text)\e[1;32m~/very/l' \
&& printf '\e[0;34m...\e[1;32mong/pathname\e[1;33m%%\e[0m\n'
Under X, tmux, or screen, the text will appear (slightly changed) in addition as your window title (status line).
The above line only displays the simplest prompt: You can see more information in the prompt if e.g. you are logged in by ssh, if you are in a directory with a git project, or if your last command exited unsuccessfully. A configuration file is supported in which you can easily customize the prompt (e.g. change colors or conditions), using standard shell code.
To install these scripts, copy them somewhere into your $PATH;
the default configuration set_prompt.config can alternatively
also be copied into /usr/local/etc or /etc.
To get support for zsh completion, put the files of the subdirectory zsh
into your zsh's $fpath.
For Gentoo, there is an ebuild in the mv overlay (available over layman).
The main program is
set_prompt
To get help for this program, call
set_prompt -h
The set_prompt program outputs a valid string for PS1 for zsh
(or for bash if the -b option is used).
If used with zsh, the prompt usually expects that the PROMPT_SUBST
option is actived (setopt promptsubst).
The set_prompt program can be either executed or sourced by zsh,
bash, or any other POSIX compatible shell.
If you source it, you should source it in a subshell, of course
(which happens automatically with `...`).
The advantage of sourcing is that it is faster.
Note that even if sourced from bash, the -b option is not implied.
By default, the set_prompt program sources the configuration file
set_prompt.config
(which is searched in /usr/local/etc/, /etc/, and in your $PATH).
So you should customize that file for your taste (e.g. to define the colors).
There is a sample script
set_prompt.sh
for bash and zsh.
You can either execute it and eval the output, like e.g.
if SOME_VARIABLE=`set_prompt.sh 2>/dev/null`
then eval "$SOME_VARIABLE"
else echo "set_prompt.sh not found" >&2
fi
or you can source it with
. set_prompt.sh
The latter has the disadvantage that it will die with an error if
set_prompt.sh cannot be found.
The above eval/sourcing of set_prompt.sh defines a function
set_prompt
which acts like the set_prompt program with the difference that is sends the
output directly to $PS1 and that appropriate options are used by default.
(In particular, default options are set for broken bash versions.)
The set_prompt.sh script makes use of particular variables, so you might
want to look at the source and modify it for your needs before using it.
Finally, the prompt supports also the variable $vcs_info_msg_0_ for zsh
(or optionally also for bash, although bash does not support it
out-of-the-box):
This variable is set by vcs_info (man zshcontrib for help on the latter).
There is an example script
git_prompt.zsh
which can be either treated with eval or sourced, similarly as
set_prompt.sh above.
This script will then activate the mechanism for vcs_info.
The configuration from git_prompt.zsh uses git_update instead of git
if git_update is in your $PATH:
For security reasons, it is recommended to copy git_update into your $PATH,
because the latter will attempt to change (drop) permissions to those of
GIT_UPDATE_USER (defaults to nobody).
If git_update fails to change the permissions, git is not invoked for
security reasons. To drop this security measurement of git_update, you
can export an empty GIT_UPDATE_USER.
Since most users without privileges will want to support such an empty
GIT_UPDATE_USER, git_prompt.zsh will do this for you if it is not possible
to drop permissions to the user nobody.
git_update is a separate command so that you can adapt it to your needs and
you can also use it other programs.
For example, if you are an emacs user, you might want to put
(setq vc-git-program "git_update")
into your ~/.emacs to get the same security mechanism also for emacs.