Prompt refuses to update when changing directories

[Pewpewarrows]

As the title suggests, whenever I cd into a directory that has version control in it, my prompt never updates to reflect that. I've followed the Install instructions verbatim:

$ curl -sL https://github.com/xvzf/vcprompt/raw/master/bin/vcprompt > ~/bin/vcprompt
$ chmod 755 ~/bin/vcprompt
$ export PS1="$(vcprompt) $PS1"

I then cd into any project directory covered by svn, git, or hg (I've tried all three). Just running the command correctly tells me any information:

$ vcprompt
svn:trunk

However, my prompt still stays as $. If I wait to run the export PS1="$(vcprompt) $PS1" line until I'm in a project directory already, then the prompt is correctly updated to be svn:trunk $. However, that svn:trunk stays in the front frozen like that no matter what I cd into from that point on. So even moving to my home directory still shows svn:trunk $ as my prompt.

This occurs both on my OSX and Ubuntu workstations. Both are running Python version 2.6.x. Both are using bash as the shell. To prevent any conflicts, I've made sure that the only line in my .bash_profile or .bashrc has been adding ~/bin to my $PATH.

Do you have any idea what might be causing this?

[Pewpewarrows]

Ended up stumbling upon a solution this morning. There's a bash variable called PROMPT_COMMAND, that if set, will execute every time a prompt appears (whether it's after a cd or any other command on the terminal).

By placing this in my .bash_profile or .bashrc, I was able to get vcprompt to always show the latest directory info:

update_prompt() {
    export PS1="$(vcprompt) blah blah blah"
}
PROMPT_COMMAND=update_prompt

Anything that I needed to update every time a new prompt appeared, I threw into that update_prompt function, such as looking for the $VIRTUAL_ENV variable being set, using a custom vcprompt format, etc.

I don't know if the PROMPT_COMMAND shenanigans is only a problem because of some system configuration of mine, or whether this is a universal issue that the docs just failed to mention. In which case, an updated README would be nice :)

[djl]

Weird. I noticed this happening myself while I was working on the README overhaul. Testing it again now, I can't get it to happen again.

I'm fairly certain it's my crappy install procedure. I'll poke around some more and update the README if I find anything.

[djl]

Updated the instructions in 81b13b6. The problem seemed to be the recursive use of $PS1.

Try that. It should be fixed now :)

[vbajpai]

I had the same issue.

@xvzf: the updated instructions didn't help me.

@Pewpewarrows: the PROMPT_COMMAND trick worked for me

[djl]

That's what I get for not using bash :)

I'll update the instructions later.

[djl]

Oh! I found a simpler way to do it. Just escape the dollar sign:

export PS1="\$(vcprompt) blah blah blah"

@vbajpai, @Pewpewarrows: can you try this way and let me know if it works?

[vbajpai]

On Jul 14, 2011, at 8:05 PM, xvzf wrote:

I have been doing that actually all this while.

[djl]

According to this page that should be working. Since it works for me in a bunch of different versions of bash, I'll settle on those instructions.