perks / zsh-quickstart-kit

Simple zsh quickstart for using zsh and zgen

ZSH Quickstart Kit

Table of Contents generated with DocToc

• Installation
  • Prerequisites
    • OS X
    • Linux
  • Set up Zgen and the starter kit
  • Customizations
    • Functions and Aliases
    • zgen plugin list
• Other Resources
  • ZSH
  • Vim

Installation

Prerequisites

Fonts

This setup includes a prompt theme that requires a powerline-compatible font. Fonts that are powerline-compatible include glyphs used to display the nice branch icon that the theme in this .zshrc uses, among other useful glyphs. Here are a few good ones I've found:

• fantasque-sans - Another powerline font
• hack - Designed for devs by devs, and happens to be pretty as well.
• Input Mono - A nice font designed for coding
• powerline-fonts collection - A collection of fonts patched to include powerline glyphs

OS X

1. Download iTerm2 from http://www.iterm2.com. Seriously, never use Terminal again.
2. Install the current version of Homebrew from http://brew.sh/.
3. brew install stow
4. Homebrew has a newer version of zsh than the one Apple ships, so brew install zsh to install it.
5. Switch your shell to zsh
   1. System Preferences -> Users & Groups.
   2. Unlock the preferences
   3. Select your user
   4. Select advanced options
   5. Set your login shell to /bin/zsh (or /usr/local/bin/zsh if you decided to use a newer version from brew)
6. Install some powerline compatible fonts from one of the links in the Fonts section above.
   1. Clone the powerline-fonts repository, or download Input Mono.
   2. Copy the fonts into ~/Library/Fonts.
   3. In iTerm 2, go to Preferences->Profile in your iTerm 2 preferences, then select one of the powerline compatible fonts you just installed.
   4. Make sure you also specify a powerline compatible font for non-ASCII in your iTerm 2 preferences or the prompt separators and branch glyphs will show up garbled.

Linux

1. Switch your shell to zsh with chsh chsh -s /bin/zsh
2. Install GNU Stow - yum install -y stow on Red Hat / CentOS systems

I don't use a GUI on Linux, so you'll have to track down how to install new fonts, install one and specify it for your terminal application.

Set up Zgen and the starter kit

Now that your fonts and default shell have been set up, install zgen and the starter kit dotfiles.

1. Install Zgen
   1. cd ~
   2. git clone [e-mail]:tarjoilija/zgen.git
2. Install the starter kit
   1. cd ~
   2. git clone [e-mail]:unixorn/zsh-quickstart-kit.git
3. Configure zsh by symlinking the .zshrc, .zsh_aliases and .zsh-completions from this repo into your ~.
   1. You can do this with stow by:
      1. cd zsh-quickstart-kit
      2. stow --target=/Users/YourUsername zsh. Replace /Users/YourUsername with /home/YourUsername if you're on Linux.

The included .zshrc, .zsh_aliases & .zsh_functions files enable:

• Automatic periodic install and update of zgen and your plugins
• Cross-session shared history
• Deduping your command history
• Many more tab completions, courtesy of the zsh-users/zsh-completions repository
• Proper command history search
• Syntax highlighting at the command line
• Tab completion of Rakefile targets
• Various helper functions for interacting with OS X's clipboard, audio volume, and Quicklook.
• oh-my-zsh compatible plugins and themes (via the zgen framework)

Customizations

Functions and Aliases

The .zshrc included in this kit will automatically source any files it finds in ~/.zshrc.d. This makes it easy for you to add extra functions and aliases without having to maintain a separate branch of this repo. The files will be sourced in alphanumeric order, I suggest a naming scheme of 001-onething, 002-something-else to ensure they're loaded in the order you expect.

zgen plugin list

I've included what I think is a good starter set of zsh plugins in this repository. To make the list easier to customize, if you create a file named ~/.zgen-local-plugins, the starter kit will source that instead of running load-starter-plugin-list as defined in .zgen-setup. Note: using ~/.zgen-local-plugins is not additive, it will completely replace the kit-provided list.

Included plugins:

• RobSis/zsh-completion-generator - Adds tool to generate zsh completion functions for programs missing them
• chrissicool/zsh-256color - sets your terminal to 256 colors if available
• djui/alias-tips - Warns you when you have an alias for the command you just typed
• peterhurford/git-it-on.zsh - Opens your current repo on github, in your current branch
• rimraf/k - k is a directory lister that also shows git status on files & directories
• sharat87/pip-app - A set of shell functions to make it easy to install small apps and utilities distributed with pip
• skx/sysadmin-util - A collection of scripts useful for sysadmins
• srijanshetty/docker-zsh - Docker completions
• stackexchange/blackbox - Tom Limoncelli's tool for storing secret information in a repository with gnupg encryption, automatically decrypting as needed
• unixorn/autoupdate-zgen - Adds autoupdate (for both zgen itself, and your plugins) to zgen
• unixorn/git-extra-commands - Collected extra git helper scripts
• unixorn/jpb.zshplugin - Some of my standard aliases & functions
• unixorn/rake-completion.zshplugin - Reads your Rakefile to tab complete the Rakefile targets
• zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search - Better history search
• zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting - Syntax highlighting as you type

We also have zgen load oh-my-zsh and these plugins:

• oh-my-zsh
  • aws
  • brew
  • chruby
  • colored-man
  • git
  • github
  • osx
  • pip
  • python
  • rsync
  • screen
  • sudo
  • vagrant

Other Resources

ZSH

For a list of other ZSH plugins and themes you can use, check out my awesome-zsh-plugins list.

Dotfiles in general

dotfiles.github.io/ has a lot of great resources for dotfiles - frameworks for managing them, configurations for editors and bootstraps with initial configurations to start from.

Vim

If you're using vim, spf13 is an excellent starter configuration and plugin collection.