SBP - Simple Bash Prompt

Simple Bash Prompt (SBP) is a bash prompt, which was simple once. This started out as a pure ripoff from powerline-shell, which is great, but written in python. SBP is all bash, which makes it fast and fun.

I've tried making the code as readable and extensible as possible. If something seems wrong, lacking or bad in some way; feel free to rant, review and create a pull request.

For a live demo of this magic head over here

Hard Requirements

• Bash 4.3+

Soft Requirements

If you want the fancy pointy segment separators, you need the powerline fonts installed and enabled. Both. You can get them here which also has installation instructions Now the hard_to_remember part. Change the settings of your terminal emulator. Something like "Settings" and then "Fonts" will probably be the right place. If you don't like powerline then use the 'plain' or 'lines' theme or create your own. If you are using Kitty as a terminal then everything should work out of the box.

Developer requirements

For local development pre-commit, shellcheck, bats and shfmt are needed.

Installing

With git and the install script

When you clone this repo, there is an install script located at ´bin/install´. It will add two lines to $HOME/.bashrc:

  SBP_PATH=/the/path/to/sbp
  source ${SBP_PATH}/sbp.bash

You could also just add these two lines to some bash config file of your own choosing manually. Keep in mind that this approach will use the master branch by default, so expect less stability.

Usage

So you're ready to go. Now you do nothing. Just use it. But you could. If you want. Change stuff up a bit. Edit your config by running sbp edit config and run sbp reload if you changed something substantial. Most changes will be effective immediately. You can use the sbp command for a lot of things:

  Usage: sbp [command]

  Commands:
  reload            - Reload SBP and user settings
  status            - Show the current configuration
  help              - Show this help text
  list
    config          - List all current settings
    segments        - List all available segments
    hooks           - List all available hooks
    themes          - List all available color themes and layouts
  edit
    config          - Opens the sbp config in $EDITOR
    colors          - Opens the colors config in $EDITOR
  set
    color           - Set [color] for the current session
    layout          - Set [layout] for the current session
  toggle
    peekaboo        - Toggle execution of [segment] or [hook]
    debug           - Toggle debug mode
  sbp

Features

Segments

Segments can be configured, moved, and hidden depending on your mood, or environment. Read more about those and how to make your own in the Segments Folder.

Hooks

Hooks let's you execute scripts asynchronously to either alert you, or prepare data in some way. Whatever you want really. Read more about those and how to make your own in the Hooks Folder.

Colors and Layouts

Colors and layouts let you decide how the prompt is drawn. Read more about those and how to make your own in the Colors and Layouts. SBP supports both truecolors through RGB values and 256 colors by using ansi codes. Many will probably just want to rely on the configuration set in Xresources, by using the xresources color setting.

Beta - VI mode

The setting settings_prompt_ready_vi_mode=1 will use the prompt_ready icon with the configured colors and change it's color depending on the current VI mode if enabled. The cursor will also change from blinking to solid block if your terminal supports it. The VI mode support has been removed as it is not possible to predictably place the VI mode indicator on a multiline prompt. PR's are very welcome if you find a way to do this.

FAQ

Is this really just bash?

Yes, but actually no. At the time of writing the main implementation has just a few calls do date, while some segments touch grep and sed but these are being removed. Sometimes we need to talk to other CLI applications though like git.

My prompt doesn't show any colors, whats wrong?

You are using a terminal that doesn't support truecolors, the OSX Terminal.app maybe? You can write your own ansi theme, or use one of the two provided ones, default-256 or xresources.

I don't want to install any fancy fonts, can I still have nice things?

Why yes! Simply use the 'plain' layout. No fonts needed. Or use the Kitty terminal which will draw most of the missing characters for you.

The git segment is too slow

If you're working on a large repository you can speed up git by issuing:

  $ git config core.fsmonitor true
  $ git config core.untrackedcache true