Styling Git Bash

When it comes to the tools I use, I like minimalism. I like to have the bare minimum of everything and make them look good. This is one of the reasons though an IDE can be really useful in some cases, I always stick to code editors like VSCode that I currently use.

Since I mentioned VSCode, I love using the built-in terminal that ships with it. When I was on Windows, I used Git Bash as an integrated terminal within VSCode. You can add any of the terminals you like by either selecting them from the terminal window or by adding any one of the following statement into your settings file.

// 64-bit cmd if available, otherwise 32-bit
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\sysnative\\cmd.exe"
// 64-bit PowerShell if available, otherwise 32-bit
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\sysnative\\WindowsPowerShell\\v1.0\\powershell.exe"
// Git Bash
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Program Files\\Git\\bin\\bash.exe"
// Bash on Ubuntu (on Windows)
"terminal.integrated.shell.windows": "C:\\Windows\\sysnative\\bash.exe"

This is how normally the git-bash prompt looks like from within VSCode:

But since I am a minimalist, this is how mine looks like. Yes, just a ->

Or you can have the -> (or any other symbol) with the current working directory displayed as here:

So how do we do it? To make this change we need to go into the C:\Program Files\Git\etc\profile.d\ folder and find the git-prompt.sh file. It looks something like this:

if test -f /etc/profile.d/git-sdk.sh
then
    TITLEPREFIX=SDK-${MSYSTEM#MINGW}
else
    TITLEPREFIX=$MSYSTEM
fi

# set window title
PS1='\[\033]0;$TITLEPREFIX:${PWD//[^[:ascii:]]/?}\007\]' 
PS1="$PS1"'\n'                 # new line
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[32m\]'       # change to green
PS1="$PS1"'\u@\h '             # user@host<space>
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[35m\]'       # change to purple 
PS1="$PS1"'$MSYSTEM '          # show MSYSTEM
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[33m\]'       # change to brownish yellow
PS1="$PS1"'\w '                 # current working directory

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"'\[\033[36m\]'  # change color to cyan
        PS1="$PS1"'`__git_ps1` '   # bash function
    fi
fi
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[0m\]'        # change color
PS1="$PS1"'\n'                 # new line
PS1="$PS1"' $ '                 # prompt: always $
MSYS2_PS1="$PS1"               # for detection by MSYS2 SDK's bash.basrc

Yes, all this looks a little cryptic if you have never looked into shell scripts. But let’s not worry too much. You don’t need to know a whole lot to customise the shell.

There are some stuff you might or might not need here. If you need a minimalist terminal, you can get rid of the user and host details, to some extent, the current path details and modify it in a way that only the current working directory is visible along with the prompt.

Note: You might need to run your editor as an administrator to be able to edit the profile.d file since by default Windows protects all the files under the "Program Files" folder.

Let us start by modifying the title. I like to keep something like Git-Bash with the current working directory in the title. For this, remove $TITLEPREFIX from the line PS1='\[\033]0;$TITLEPREFIX:${PWD//[^[:ascii:]]/?}\007\]' and add something like this PS1='\[\033]0;Git-Bash: ${PWD//[^[:ascii:]]/?}\007\]'. This will change the title to “Git-Bash: path to current working directory”.

Next, remove the whole if section since we have added a custom title:

if test -f /etc/profile.d/git-sdk.sh
then
    TITLEPREFIX=SDK-${MSYSTEM#MINGW}
else
    TITLEPREFIX=$MSYSTEM
fi

Next, removing the following lines will remove MINGW64 from the prompt:

PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[35m\]' # change to purple

PS1="$PS1"'$MSYSTEM ' # show MSYSTEM

Things like PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[32m\]' are used to set the colour of the string that follows. [32m\] denotes that the colour has to be green. Here are a few colours that can be applied:

VSCode has its own Git integration, so I do not need my command promp to show me any git related details like brank or uncommitted files etc. So I removed the following lines to disable git support. Yes I know that kind of beats the purpose of "git" bash, but then VSCode already gives me everything.

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"'\[\033[36m\]'  # change color to cyan
        PS1="$PS1"'`__git_ps1` '   # bash function
    fi
fi

After all the editing, this is how your file should look like:

# set window title
PS1='\[\033]0;Git-Bash: ${PWD//[^[:ascii:]]/?}\007\]'
PS1="$PS1"'\n'                 # new line
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[32m\]'       # change to green
PS1="$PS1"'➜ '                # ➜
PS1="$PS1"'\[\033[0m\]'        # change color
MSYS2_PS1="$PS1"               # for detection by MSYS2 SDK's bash.basrc

This is how it looks like after all the cosmetic changes:

Here is a little screencast I tried making in a free app (hence the big ass watermark!) to give an overview of what I listed in the post. It might act as a supplement for the post. Give it a watch. First time screencasting with a bout of cold, so watch out for 💩

YouTube Video

So there you have it, your wonderful looking git-bash nicely integrated with your VSCode. Go play around with it, add your own symbols to the prompt using character map in windows.

Originally published on vishnupadmanabhan.com

Banner image: Unsplash

If you liked this article or disliked it for some reason, drop me an email and we shall have a chat. I love having good conversations. You can find me at: vishnupadmanabhan.com