Prompt Version Control Information

Bash-it provides prompt Themes with the ability to check and display version control information for the current directory. The information is retrieved for each directory and can slow down the navigation of projects with a large number of files and folders. Turn version control checking off to prevent slow directory navigation within large projects.

Controlling Flags

Bash-it provides a flag (SCM_CHECK) within the ~/.bash_profile file that turns off/on version control information checking and display within all themes. Version control checking is on by default unless explicitly turned off.

Set SCM_CHECK to ‘false’ to turn off version control checks for all themes:

  • export SCM_CHECK=false

Set SCM_CHECK to ‘true’ (the default value) to turn on version control checks for all themes:

  • export SCM_CHECK=true

NOTE: It is possible for themes to ignore the SCM_CHECK flag and query specific version control information directly. For example, themes that use functions like git_prompt_vars skip the SCM_CHECK flag to retrieve and display git prompt information. If you turned version control checking off and you still see version control information within your prompt, then functions like git_prompt_vars are most likely the reason why.

Git prompt

Bash-it has some nice features related to Git, continue reading to know more about these features.

Repository info in the prompt

Bash-it can show some information about Git repositories in the shell prompt: the current branch, tag or commit you are at, how many commits the local branch is ahead or behind from the remote branch, and if you have changes stashed.

Additionally, you can view the status of your working copy and get the count of staged, unstaged and untracked files. This feature is controlled through the flag SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS as follows:

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS to ‘true’ (the default value) to show the working copy details in your prompt:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS=true

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS to ‘false’ to don’t show it:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS=false

NOTE: If using SCM_GIT_SHOW_MINIMAL_INFO=true, then the value of SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS is ignored.

Remotes and remote branches

In some git workflows, you must work with various remotes, for this reason, Bash-it can provide some useful information about your remotes and your remote branches, for example, the remote on you are working, or if your local branch is tracking a remote branch.

You can control this feature with the flag SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO as follows:

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO to ‘auto’ (the default value) to activate it only when more than one remote is configured in the current repo:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO=auto

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO to ‘true’ to always activate the feature:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO=true

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO to ‘false’ to disable the feature:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO=false

NOTE: If using SCM_GIT_SHOW_MINIMAL_INFO=true, then the value of SCM_GIT_SHOW_REMOTE_INFO is ignored.

Untracked files

By default, the git status command shows information about untracked files. This behavior can be controlled through command-line flags or git configuration files. For big repositories, ignoring untracked files can make git faster. Bash-it uses git status to gather the repo information it shows in the prompt, so in some circumstances, it can be useful to instruct Bash-it to ignore these files. You can control this behavior with the flag SCM_GIT_IGNORE_UNTRACKED:

Set SCM_GIT_IGNORE_UNTRACKED to ‘false’ (the default value) to get information about untracked files:

  • export SCM_GIT_IGNORE_UNTRACKED=false

Set SCM_GIT_IGNORE_UNTRACKED to ‘true’ to ignore untracked files:

  • export SCM_GIT_IGNORE_UNTRACKED=true

Also, with this flag to false, Bash-it will not show the repository as dirty when the repo has untracked files, and will not display the count of untracked files.

NOTE: If you set in git configuration file the option to ignore untracked files, this flag has no effect, and Bash-it will ignore untracked files always.

Stash item count

When SCM_GIT_SHOW_DETAILS is enabled, you can get the count of stashed items. This feature can be useful when a user has a lot of stash items. This feature is controlled through the flag SCM_GIT_SHOW_STASH_INFO as follows:

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_STASH_INFO to ‘true’ (the default value) to show the count of stashed items:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_STASH_INFO=true

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_STASH_INFO to ‘false’ to don’t show it:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_STASH_INFO=false

Ahead/Behind Count

When displaying information regarding whether or not the local branch is ahead or behind its remote counterpart, you can opt to display the number of commits ahead/behind. This is useful if you only care whether or not you are ahead or behind and do not care how far ahead/behind you are.

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_COMMIT_COUNT to ‘true’ (the default value) to show the count of commits ahead/behind:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_COMMIT_COUNT=true

Set SCM_GIT_SHOW_COMMIT_COUNT to ‘false’ to don’t show it:

  • export SCM_GIT_SHOW_COMMIT_COUNT=false

Git user

In some environments, it is useful to know the value of the current git user, which is used to mark all new commits. For example, any organization that uses the practice of pair programming will typically author each commit with combined names of the two authors. When another pair uses the same pairing station, the authors are changed at the beginning of the session.

To get up and running with this technique, run gem install pivotal_git_scripts, and then edit your ~/.pairs file, according to the specification on the gem’s homepage. After that, you should be able to run git pair kg as to set the author to, eg. “Konstantin Gredeskoul and Alex Saxby”, assuming they’ve been added to the ~/.pairs file. Please see gem’s documentation for more information.

To enable the display of the current pair in the prompt, you must set SCM_GIT_SHOW_CURRENT_USER to true. Once set, the SCM_CURRENT_USER variable will be automatically populated with the initials of the git author(s). It will also be included in the default git prompt. Even if you do not have git pair installed, as long as your user.name is set, your initials will be computed from your name and shown in the prompt.

You can control the prefix and the suffix of this component using the two variables:

  • export SCM_THEME_CURRENT_USER_PREFFIX=' ☺︎ '

And

  • export SCM_THEME_CURRENT_USER_SUFFIX=' ☺︎ '

NOTE: If using SCM_GIT_SHOW_MINIMAL_INFO=true, then the value of SCM_GIT_SHOW_CURRENT_USER is ignored.

Git show minimal status info

To speed up the prompt while still getting minimal git status information displayed such as the value of HEAD and whether there are any dirty objects, you can set:

export SCM_GIT_SHOW_MINIMAL_INFO=true

Ignore repo status

When working in repos with a large codebase, Bash-it can slow down your prompt when checking the repo status. To avoid it, there is an option you can set via Git config to disable checking repo status in Bash-it.

To disable checking the status in the current repo:

$ git config --add bash-it.hide-status 1

But if you would like to disable it globally, and stop checking the status for all of your repos:

$ git config --global --add bash-it.hide-status 1

Setting this flag globally has the same effect as SCM_CHECK=true, but only for Git repos.

Speed up git status calculations

As an alternative to ignoring repo status entirely, you can try out the gitstatus plugin. This plugin speeds up all git status calculations by up to 10x times!

NOTE: You will need to clone gitstatus repo from here.