Display your current git branch as part of your bash prompt

http://gist.github.com/168835

by kd5bjo • 17 years ago

32 21 17 years ago

gist.github.com

kd5bjo3• 17 years ago

Emmett and I figured this out the other day at the request of one of our other engineers; I thought that some of you might be interested in it.

chrischen• 17 years ago

cool, thanks.

eapen• 17 years ago

This is cool.. but how do I undo this?

kd5bjo3• 17 years ago

You can set your prompt to whatever you want by running `export PS1=...`. What the default is depends on which version of unix you're running. Often, you can get your original prompt back by running `source ~/.bashrc`.

Barring that, logging out and back in will definitely fix it, as long as you didn't put it in one of your bash config files.

decklin2• 17 years ago

It's better to use a plumbing command for this sort of thing; git-completion.bash (http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob;f=contrib/comple...) has a thorough example. (The actual command called is 'git symbolic-ref HEAD'.)

kd5bjo3• 17 years ago

That's definitely a lot more full-featured, but seems like overkill for what I was trying to do.

Had I known about `git symbolic-ref`, I might have used that instead of `git branch`. On the other hand, I would have needed to re-implement lots of what `git branch` does, such as detecting the difference between not being in a git repository and simply not being on a branch.

The interface of `git branch` seems stable enough that I doubt it will break this. If it does, it should take me no longer than 5 minutes to fix, since that's about how long it would take me to re-write the whole thing from scratch.

Is there any particular reason that using `git symbolic-ref` is better than `git branch` in this case, given that I want human-readable output, instead an unambiguous filesystem location?

joshwa• 17 years ago

git-completion.bash has the added benefit of giving you tab-completion on git commands, and arguments to git commands.

zain• 17 years ago

Cool! I've practically created my own framework in Bash to hack my prompt but I never thought about sharing it.

My prompt shows the git branch, svn revision, and active virtualenv ("workon" and "deactivate" are virtualenv commands in the screenshot below). Also, mine has COLORS! (Colors within the dynamic function are much harder than they sound)

Here's a quick screenshot: http://img.skitch.com/20090817-gtp7bgkmdn14j84ryhepa2edke.pn...

You can extend it pretty easily to show whatever you want by doing little more than adding another function. Throw this into ~/.profile if you want to try it: http://pastebin.com/f79a9af51

llimllib• 17 years ago

Totally do this; I can't live without it.

Also, display your current branch in mercurial repos: http://stevelosh.com/blog/entry/2009/3/17/mercurial-bash-pro...

myth_drannon• 17 years ago

It's by default in msysgit bash.

PStamatiou• 17 years ago

Isn't this also in a public github guide? http://github.com/guides/put-your-git-branch-name-in-your-sh...

Been using it for a while now. ;-)

oldgregg• 17 years ago

Funny, I wrote this .bash_profile script (http://gist.github.com/168286) just the other day because I wanted... 1) Minimalist colors 2) Stripped down CLEAN prompt 3) For GIT folders it will display the current branch.

It was based on this which I thought was too ugly: http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2008/03/13/show-your-git...

Also, if you use git+github+capistrano, I wrote a bash script where you type "tap" and it will add all new files, commit, push to github. If you type "tap /d" it will also cap deploy it to the server and reload in nginx passenger. For small projects I'll push something and then have to make a small change. Now I can just edit the file in textmate and can add-commit-push-deploy with one command.

http://gist.github.com/168589

jackdawjack• 17 years ago

I liked this but it really slowed things down. Perhaps because my home folder etc are all on nfs shares?

lvv• 17 years ago

You have not seen git-prompt yet. How about forgetting that there is git-status? See http://volnitsky.com/project/git-prompt And it will do svn, hg and a lot of other stuff.

sandGorgon• 17 years ago

zsh does a much better job (with its right prompts and formatting) http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/2101/zsh1.png - this actually shows a git repository imported from svn

http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/3738/zsh2.png - this shows a regular svn repo

This is what you need in your zshrc

# precmd is called just before the prompt is printed function precmd() { title “zsh” “$USER@%m” “%55<…<%~” psvar=() vcs_info [[ -n $vcs_info_msg_0_ ]] && psvar[1]=”$vcs_info_msg_0_” }

vcs_info export RPS1=”${YELLOW}%1v${NORM}”

xgamerx• 17 years ago

I reworked this script to show your branch name in green if the branch is clean and red if the branch is dirty. Personal preference but I prefer the visual color distinction denoting branch state.

http://gist.github.com/120804

mbrubeck• 17 years ago

I use Ryan Tomayko's git-sh, a "git mode" for Bash that includes the branch in the prompt, and also adds the most common git commands as top-level commands (so you can type "checkout master" instead of "git checkout master"):

http://github.com/rtomayko/git-sh/tree/master

codahale• 17 years ago

Leonid Volnitsky's git-prompt is the best git-enabled Bash script I've found.

http://github.com/lvv/git-prompt/tree/master

Display your current git branch as part of your bash prompt

Related Stories