prompt

A fast, simple bash prompt.

Installation

$ cd $WHERE_YOU_KEEP_GITHUB_REPOS
$ git clone https://github.com/skeswa/prompt
$ cd prompt
$ make install
$ . ~/.bashrc

Features

• Path shortening (~/some/really/long/path/like/this/you/might/see → ~/some/really/l/p/l/t/y/might/see)
• Basic git branch or ref information
• Relatively good performance (we try to limit sub-shells as much as possible)
• Customizable colors
• Good documentation (lotsa comments - just in case you want to tweak something)
• Git tab-completion
• Autocomplete command history with arrow keys
• Makes bash feel a little more modern

Assumptions

• We assume that you have bash installed at version 3.0.0 or higher
• We assume that you have git installed at version 2.0.0 or higher
• We assume that your terminal supports 256 colors
• We assume that your terminal color scheme has a dark(ish) background

How to update

$ cd $WHERE_YOU_KEEP_GITHUB_REPOS/prompt
$ git pull
$ . ~/.bashrc

Configuration

Colors

Colors can be customized by editing the following environment variables:

• PROMPT_PWD_COLOR - Color for the current working directory (e.g. ~/a/b/c), defaults to 38;5;43
• PROMPT_GIT_COLOR - Color for the current git branch/ref (e.g. :master), defaults to 38;5;105
• PROMPT_USERHOST_COLOR - Color for the current user session info (e.g. corey@desktop), defaults to 38;5;39
• PROMPT_DOLLAR_COLOR - Color for the dollar sign, defaults to 38;5;255
• PROMPT_ERROR_COLOR - Color for the dollar sign when the previous command failed, defaults to 38;5;204

To come up with your own colors, take a look at the reference graphic below from wikipedia:

Custom hostname

You can override the host name of your prompt (the desktop part of corey@desktop) by setting the PROMPT_HOST_NAME environment variable. For example, if your desired prompt is corey@inthehouse, then you might stick this in your ~/.bashrc before the . ~/.prompt/prompt.bash:

export PROMPT_HOST_NAME='inthehouse'

How does it work?

bash provides a special set of variables for your prompts. PS1 is the one used by default. The install script adds a command to ~/.bashrc, a file that is run every time a new terminal opens. Inside of the new command, we run our script and set your PS1 which runs some git commands to determine its current state and outputs them as a string.

Support

Linux and Mac OSX are supported platforms.

Try on Windows at your own peril.

Uninstallation

To uninstall prompt, perform the following steps:

• Remove . ~/.prompt/prompt.bash and . ~/.prompt/git-completion.bash from ~/.bashrc
• Delete ~/.prompt (e.g. rm ~/.prompt)
• Remove the repository folder from which prompt was originally installed
• During installation, we may have added a . ~/.bashrc invocation to ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile
  • Feel free to remove this if it's no longer necessary

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Sandile Keswa

Licensed under the MIT license.