jm-shell

A highly informative, customized Bash shell.

Features

Divider / Status Line

This is a dark grey line that divides the last command from the prompt. It also shows some relevent info about the last command and the current environment.

helpful colors and divider to separate commands
time last command finished on the right
shows error code of last command, if any
shows total time of last command if over 4 seconds
indicates if inside Vim, Midnight Commander, Python virtualenv (S), or Desk
shows current system load average if over 1, in red if over 2
shows battery charge status if laptop battery is less than full

Current Location / Status Line

shows username@hostname:path
shows number of items in current directory
path is in grey if not writeable
path will drop down to the next line if it doesn’t fit
shows number of background jobs on the left, if any
gives info on source code repositories if current dir is in one (Subversion, Mercurial, Git)

Prompt

simple, bold yellow dollar sign
text is standard grey while typing / autocompleting
command is redrawn in bold yellow after entering

Background Jobs

It keeps history entries unique, up to date among all open shells and with most recent commands last (at the bottom). This is better for searching your command history with the up arrows or Ctrl-r.

It also maintains a shell log file in ~/.local/share/bash/shell.log

The regular bash history file has only unique commands for reverse history searching. The shell log is a full history of your shell activity for reference. It also logs a commented command to indicate new shells, closed shells and blank lines entered.

Shell log entries look like this:

Sun Apr  8 06:48:19 EDT 2018	/home/jmcclare	nvim ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs

Each entry lists the time the command was entered, the command’s current working directory, and the command. The fields are tab separated.

Both the history and the shell log file omit logging commands that begin with a space. This is the same as Bash’s ignorespace or ignoreboth options, but it does this no matter how those are set.

Other Included Prompt Styles

standard and standard-mono

This is the default Bash prompt style configured in most default ~/.bashrc files.

Set PROMPT_STYLE to standard or default for the standard Bash color prompt. Set it to standard-mono or default-mono for the non‐color version.

fast and fast-mono

This the default Bash color prompt style. Setting this style also skips the background jobs. It’s a bit better for performance on an overloaded system.

Set PROMPT_STYLE to fast for the standard Bash color prompt. Set it to fast-mono for the non‐color version.

tweaked

A slight tweak of the default Bash color prompt style. Unlike the standard, it also runs the background jobs.

extensive

The style described at the top. This is the default style if you don’t set PROMPT_STYLE.

Set PROMPT_STYLE to extensive-dark for a dark version that is more legible on white terminal backgrounds.

minimal

Nothing but a grey dollar sign prompt. Also doesn’t run the background jobs. A bit better for performance on an overloaded system.

kirby

Turns your prompt into a dancing Kirby!

<('.'<)
^('.')^
(>'.')>
^('.')^

erection

Another not‐so‐useful prompt. I’ll let you guess what it looks like. Don’t use it for too long or you’ll run out of screen space.

divider

A divider line prompt similar to the extensive style, but it uses only standard Bash prompt variables. A bit better for performance than the extensive style.

Installation

Clone this repository into ~/.local/lib/jm-shell with:

git clone git@github.com:jmcclare/jm-shell.git ~/.local/lib/jm-shell

Add the following to your ~/.bashrc

# Source jm-shell custom prompt if it exists.
if [ -f "$HOME/.local/lib/jm-shell/ps1" ]
then
    source "$HOME/.local/lib/jm-shell/ps1"
fi

You can also clone this repo anywhere you want, then copy or symlink ps1, colors.sh, and color_unset.sh into a directory like ~/.local/lib/bash

Then add the following to your ~/.bashrc

source ~/local/lib/bash/ps1
if [ -f "$HOME/local/lib/bash/ps1" ]
then
    source "$HOME/local/lib/bash/ps1"
fi

If you are using anything that adds something to your Bash $PROMPT_COMMAND like fzf, make sure you source ps1 first. The prompt command this PS1 adds must be the first part of your $PROMPT_COMMAND.

Configuration

You can set one of the other styles any time, or in your ~/.bashrc by setting PROMPT_STYLE, like this:

PROMPT_STYLE=kirby

The default prompt style is extensive.

You can change the location of the shell log file by setting $BASHSHELLLOGFILE.

BASHSHELLLOGFILE=~/.bash-shell.log

The default location is ~/.local/share/bash/shell.log

The history updater uses the standard Bash variables HISTFILE, HISTFILESIZE, and HISTSIZE. It assumes HISTCONTROL is set to ignoreboth:erasedups and it does a better job than both of those options normally do.

bpoussin / jm-shell