After having used prompt pure for about a year, I felt that a two-line prompt was not for me. Also not utilizing the right side of the terminal seemed a missed opportunity. Still there is much to like: the elapsed time of a process, the coloring of the prompt if the exit code of the process isn't 0, git integration. So I took "pure", mixed in my ideas of what a prompt should look like and came up with "lean" - a 1 line prompt that stays out of your face.
So lean is an evolution (complete rewrite) of pure, with the following changes:
- Defaults to a very sparse setup, only showing information you need at the moment.
- Comes with the perfect prompt character. Author went through the entire ASCII range to find it.
- Never displays your username (assuming you know who you are).
- When tmux is active it shows a yellow 't' (I disabled the tmux bar, so this is some visual indication that tmux is active).
- Show remote host if logged in through SSH.
- All in one line, most stuff in the right prompt, leaving the left prompt nice and clean
- shows background jobs (in the left prompt)
- show (dirty) git repos
- shortens path if needed (longer then 70% of your screen)
When lean starts, only 2 characters show on the screen '%' on the left and '~' on the right. All other info is omitted (like the user and system you are on), and shown only when needed.
Here is a screencast showing the prompt. Note: for some reason the screencast does not show the space between the '%' character and the start of the command line. NOTE This issue has been fixed.