Namran Hussin Linux,mac,SoftwareDevelopment How to customise your terminal to zsh with its useful theme and plugins

How to customise your terminal to zsh with its useful theme and plugins

I come across the zsh terminal after an upgrade of MacOS to Catalina recently. Where it suggest me to use zsh as default terminal instead of bash.
After searching around about zsh, I found there is a useful plugins and very nice themes.
I was always wondering how to get the customised console display for dev environment where I can easily know which branch I am currently in. And possibly few other information such as current time. :P

brew install zsh

So, I found the following is useful for zsh.
Oh My zsh , which can be easily installed from the following Oh My Zsh repository. https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/

I used the manual method as below:

git clone https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh
cp ~/.oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template ~/.zshrc
chsh -s $(which zsh)

I personally like the `powerlevel9k` themes and few other useful plugins.
So I did the following further customisation.

git clone https://github.com/bhilburn/powerlevel9k.git ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/themes/powerlevel9k

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-docker.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-docker

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Install fonts needed for powerline:

git clone https://github.com/powerline/fonts.git --depth=1\n
cd fonts
./install.sh
cd fontconfig
cp 50-enable-terminess-powerline.conf ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d
fc-cache -vf

Set the font preferences in my iterm2’s profiles:

So, here is my final `.zshrc` contents for your references.
Please adjust to own preferences.

# If you come from bash you might have to change your $PATH.
# export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH

# Path to your oh-my-zsh installation.
export ZSH="/Users/namranhussin/.oh-my-zsh"

# Set name of the theme to load --- if set to "random", it will
# load a random theme each time oh-my-zsh is loaded, in which case,
# to know which specific one was loaded, run: echo $RANDOM_THEME
# See https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/wiki/Themes
#ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell"
ZSH_THEME="powerlevel9k/powerlevel9k"


# Set list of themes to pick from when loading at random
# Setting this variable when ZSH_THEME=random will cause zsh to load
# a theme from this variable instead of looking in ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes/
# If set to an empty array, this variable will have no effect.
# ZSH_THEME_RANDOM_CANDIDATES=( "robbyrussell" "agnoster" )

# Uncomment the following line to use case-sensitive completion.
# CASE_SENSITIVE="true"

# Uncomment the following line to use hyphen-insensitive completion.
# Case-sensitive completion must be off. _ and - will be interchangeable.
# HYPHEN_INSENSITIVE="true"

# Uncomment the following line to disable bi-weekly auto-update checks.
# DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE="true"

# Uncomment the following line to automatically update without prompting.
# DISABLE_UPDATE_PROMPT="true"

# Uncomment the following line to change how often to auto-update (in days).
# export UPDATE_ZSH_DAYS=13

# Uncomment the following line if pasting URLs and other text is messed up.
# DISABLE_MAGIC_FUNCTIONS=true

# Uncomment the following line to disable colors in ls.
# DISABLE_LS_COLORS="true"

# Uncomment the following line to disable auto-setting terminal title.
# DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"

# Uncomment the following line to enable command auto-correction.
# ENABLE_CORRECTION="true"

# Uncomment the following line to display red dots whilst waiting for completion.
# COMPLETION_WAITING_DOTS="true"

# Uncomment the following line if you want to disable marking untracked files
# under VCS as dirty. This makes repository status check for large repositories
# much, much faster.
# DISABLE_UNTRACKED_FILES_DIRTY="true"

# Uncomment the following line if you want to change the command execution time
# stamp shown in the history command output.
# You can set one of the optional three formats:
# "mm/dd/yyyy"|"dd.mm.yyyy"|"yyyy-mm-dd"
# or set a custom format using the strftime function format specifications,
# see 'man strftime' for details.
# HIST_STAMPS="mm/dd/yyyy"

# Would you like to use another custom folder than $ZSH/custom?
# ZSH_CUSTOM=/path/to/new-custom-folder

# Which plugins would you like to load?
# Standard plugins can be found in ~/.oh-my-zsh/plugins/*
# Custom plugins may be added to ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/
# Example format: plugins=(rails git textmate ruby lighthouse)
# Add wisely, as too many plugins slow down shell startup.
plugins=(
 git
 docker
 zsh-syntax-highlighting
 zsh-autosuggestions
)

source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh

# User configuration

# export MANPATH="/usr/local/man:$MANPATH"

# You may need to manually set your language environment
# export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

# Preferred editor for local and remote sessions
# if [[ -n $SSH_CONNECTION ]]; then
#   export EDITOR='vim'
# else
#   export EDITOR='mvim'
# fi

# Compilation flags
# export ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64"

# Set personal aliases, overriding those provided by oh-my-zsh libs,
# plugins, and themes. Aliases can be placed here, though oh-my-zsh
# users are encouraged to define aliases within the ZSH_CUSTOM folder.
# For a full list of active aliases, run `alias`.
#
# Example aliases
# alias zshconfig="mate ~/.zshrc"
# alias ohmyzsh="mate ~/.oh-my-zsh"

my end result:

So, which one do you prefer , ‘bash’ or ‘zsh’?

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