Rainbow bash!
Better bash prompt! you don't need zsh for cool prompts.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Do you think this is zsh?
or this?
Nope! is bash with rainbow bash \o/
DISCLAIMER: I only use GNU/Linux, I haven't tested on Mac
Preparation
System locale
We are going to use unicode for the glyphs, you can check if your system is already configured:
$ locale
LANG=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_TIME=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_NAME=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=es_ES.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
If not, check your distro manual, for example
Unicode terminal
You can use konsole, terminator...
You are thinking... I love urxvt! You can use urxvt, but it has problems with fontconfig and we are going to use it in the future, so don't use urxvt please :)
don't be sad, I have the answer if you like urxvt, use the new and promising termite
we are almost ready
Font and glyphs
I pass a lot of hours in front of the terminal, I bet you too, we need to put a fancy and easy to read font, I personally like Source code pro from Adobe (don't let Adobe word afraid you, its free as in freedom, thanks Adobe!) but you can use Inconsolata or others, Download and install it:
wget https://github.com/adobe-fonts/source-code-pro/archive/1.017R.zip
unzip 1.017R.zip
mkdir -p ~/.fonts
cp source-code-pro-1.017R/OTF/*.otf ~/.fonts/
fc-cache -f -v
Configure your terminal to use Source Code pro, for example in termite should be:
font = Source Code Pro 11
Do you like fancy icons? yup, me too :) we are going to setup font awesome and powerline icons, but you can set a lot more fonts like octicons, so is up to you to set up more.
The explanation is easy, when an unicode glyph is needit, for example the
\uf17c character (tux icon in fontawesome) will be checked in the default
font (Source code pro in our case) and if is not found then will fallback to
the ones that we have configure (fontawesome and powerline).
So, install the fonts:
wget http://fontawesome.io/assets/font-awesome-4.7.0.zip
unzip font-awesome-4.2.0.zip
cp font-awesome-4.2.0/fonts/FontAwesome.otf ~/.fonts/
wget https://github.com/powerline/powerline/raw/develop/font/PowerlineSymbols.otf -O $HOME/.fonts/PowerlineSymbols.otf
fc-cache -f -v
And configure our fallbacks for source code pro, for this create a file in:
$HOME/fontconfig/conf.d/10-fallback.conf with the fallbacks:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<!-- fallback fonts when a glyph is not found in the current font-->
<fontconfig>
<alias>
<family>Source Code Pro</family>
<prefer>
<family>FontAwesome</family>
<family>PowerlineSymbols</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>
we are ready for rainbow bash! first, we are going to check if this works, close your terminal session and open a new one and check it with:
python -c "print(''.join([chr(i) + '\u0020\u0020' for i in range(61440, 61440 + 525)]))"
and:
python -c "print('\u2588\ue0a0\ue0a1\ue0a2\ue0b0\ue0b1\ue0b2\ue0b3')"
You should see something like this:
Installation
Note: There's a bashscript that automates the installation of the fonts and rainbow bash here, if you want the manual steps instead continue reading.
Install Rainbow bash:
$ git clone https://github.com/slok/rainbow-bash.git $HOME/.rainbow-bash
Add this to you .bashrc:
# Prompt
RBW_PATH=$HOME/.rainbow-bash
source $RBW_PATH/init.sh
rbw_load_theme simple
you can change rbw_load_theme simple with any of the described themes
Themes
Custom themes
You can make custom themes is easy, rainbow bash gives you colors and plugins.
Check each plugin folder to check which functions and variables gives you.