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README.md

Customising the shell – bash profile

Tweaking .bash_profile

The exact sequence in which bash configuration files are loaded is somewhat complicated and depends on the system and whether the shell is interactive or not. The best way to understand it would be to add a simple logging statement on top of each file:

echo "Loading system bash.bashrc..."

For most cases this is not necessary and it's enough to just add everything you need into user profile.

Create it if it doesn't exist already:

touch .bash_profile

This file accepts regular bash commands, so can do a lot of things.

Some ideas:

  • create an alias for a frequently used command:
alias vs="devenv.exe -edit $*"

This will open a file in Visual Studio (assuming that devenv.exe is in the PATH).

  • start shell in a specific folder:
cd /c/dev/
  • configure history for better experience with incremental search:
# ignore duplicates
export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth:erasedups

# unlimited bash history
export HISTFILESIZE=
export HISTSIZE=
  • you can even read some secrets from a secret store, decrypt them and store in environment variables for the duration of the interactive session.

Add extra tab-completion sources

This is a little bit more involved, but can make day-to-day work much easier if configured correctly.

  • clone bash-it – the community Bash framework.
git clone https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it.git
  • take a look at available completions and source the ones that you want in your .bash_profile (assuming you cloned it in /c/dev/public/):
source /c/dev/public/bash-it/completion/available/docker.completion.bash
source /c/dev/public/bash-it/completion/available/docker-compose.completion.bash
source /c/Dev/public/bash-it/completion/available/npm.completion.bash
source /c/Dev/public/bash-it/completion/available/terraform.completion.bash
  • if you want to add AWS CLI completions, you can add them too:
source /c/dev/public/bash-it/completion/available/awscli.completion.bash

NB: To make this work correctly on Windows, you will have to install AWS CLI using pip (that is you first have to install Python), not using the default exe installer.

Bonus points

Customise command prompt to look like cmder 😀:

PS1='\[\033]0;${PWD//[^[:ascii:]]/?}\007\]' # set window title

# non-printable characters must be enclosed inside \[ and \]
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[1;32m\]'            # set colour to green
PS1="$PS1"'\w'                        # current working directory

# display git branch
if test -z "$WINELOADERNOEXEC"
then
    GIT_EXEC_PATH="$(git --exec-path 2>/dev/null)"
    COMPLETION_PATH="${GIT_EXEC_PATH%/libexec/git-core}"
    COMPLETION_PATH="${COMPLETION_PATH%/lib/git-core}"
    COMPLETION_PATH="$COMPLETION_PATH/share/git/completion"
    if test -f "$COMPLETION_PATH/git-prompt.sh"
    then
        . "$COMPLETION_PATH/git-completion.bash"
        . "$COMPLETION_PATH/git-prompt.sh"
        PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[1;34m\]'  # set colour to blue
        PS1="$PS1"'`__git_ps1`'   # bash function
    fi
fi

PS1="$PS1"'\n'                        # new line
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[1;33m\]'            # set colour to yellow
PS1="$PS1"'λ: '                       # λ: + space
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[0m\]'               # reset colour

Read more about tweaking the Bash prompt, if you're interested.