/termtools

Customize your terminal using JavaScript. With themes, extra alias and functions, we combine the power from both JavaScript and Bash.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

Bash Profile in JavaScript

Easy to customize, built on top of the power of JavaScript and Bash, it adds a bunch of aliases, functions, features and extra funcionality for your bash profile.
The perfect tool to optimize the JavaScript developer command line.

termtools themes NPM Scripts auto completion Termtools with battery, time and read only

Still in alpha version. Looking for tests and feedback :)

Features

  • Fully customizable using JavaScript
  • Applies to PS1
  • Adds auto completion to npm scripts
  • Terminal comands to enable or disable it (restoring your previous PS1)
  • Allows you to dinamically turn on and off parts of PS1
  • PS2 with line numbers
  • Auto completes git commands
  • Shows current branch and git state (also customizable)
  • Lots of Extra aliases (check the aliases section for more info about it)
  • Extra functions
  • Suport themes (coming with 6 themes for you to extend and customize...see below)
  • Move easily from one theme to another
  • Protects some actions (like deleting or change permissions to root path)
  • Auto installs fonts for you (although, you might need to select them in your terminal settings)
  • Ensures colors...everywhere... grep, git, ls...
  • More tools, like time, battery and readOnly...
  • Extendable...you can customize your theme with any extra string, allowing you to use JavaScript to decide what to show
  • Create aditional, customizable parts for $PS1
  • Ignore duplicate commands in history
  • New terminal windows will have the history from brevious bash

Installing it

Easy like sunday morning!

npm install -g @nasc/termtools

Applying it

Run this command and, if everything went well, your terminal should be good looking by now!

termtools apply

This will also install the fonts you will need, if they are not already there.

Oh Oh!

Seing weird characters? No worries, follow the tips your own terminal will give you.
At any time, you can run termtools check to validate the characters and some colors.

The font we are using (and was already installed for you) is:
"Droid Sans Mono for Powerline Plus Nerd File Types Mono"

All you gotta do is go to your terminal settings and edit your profile changing its font face/family to that one.

In Visual Studio Code, you can add the settings for the integrated terminal (ctrl/cmd+",", digite "terminal.integrated.fontFamily" to find it easily):

"terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "Droid Sans Mono for Powerline Plus Nerd File Types Mono"

You should be able to run termtools check and see this message:

Termtools character set test

Removing it (restore)

Want to see your PS1 as it was before (will also loose all the aliases and extra functions we had applied to your bash).

 termtools remove 
 # or
 termtools restore 

To bring it back, just run the apply command again:

 termtools apply 

Reloading it

You will probably not need to reload it anytime soon, but just in case...
After installed and applied, you have three ways to reload it. They will reload the whole bash profile (applying any updates that might be outdated).

# alternative 1
termtools reload
#alternative 2
reload
# alternative 3
termtools restore
termtools apply

CLI options

You can use the cli options following the pattern:

termtools [options]

Option Description
help Shows the help contenbt
apply Applies the termtools PS1 effects
reload Reloads the bash profile
restore Disables termtools effects, restoring your PS1 to what is was before
customize Will copy the default theme into your home directory for you to customize it.
BE CAREFUL: It will overwrite your ~/.bash_profile.js if it already exists and you may loose any customization you had applied to it
set theme Replaces the current theme with an existing one. Use [tab] to see the list of installed themes.
BE CAREFUL: It will overwrite your ~/.bash_profile.js if it already exists and you may loose any customization you had applied to it
check Shows a test block for you to verify if your font family is working ok

You can hit [tab] for some auto-complete

Git integration

If you are navigating in a directory that happens to belong to a Git Repository, you will see its current branch in your terminal.
Also, the color indicates the current status of your branch and you might see symbols identifying your branch as behind, ahead or diverged.

Termtools default theme

PS2

We also change your PS2 a little, adding line numbers for your multiple lined commands:

Termtools multiline commands with line numbers

Themes

Yes, we deliver termtools with 6 builtin themes, they are:

  • basic
  • default
  • hell
  • sea
  • pinkish
  • round

You can easily move from one theme to another using the command


 termtools set theme [theme-name]
 

Just be careful! It will replace your ~/.bash_profile.js and, if you have done any customization to it, you will loose them.

If you have created a very nice theme and want to share, send us a pull request 😊

Customizing it

You can customize Termtools using JavaScript \o/
And it is not even a JSON, nope...it is JavaScript, indeed 🙏.

We can create a boilerplate for you to customize (a copy of the default theme).
Just run:

 termtools customize

It will create a file at ~/.bash_profile.js.
That file is a copy of our default theme, with comments and all you might need to extend it.
This JavaScript file must export a literal object, or a function that returns a literal object.

If you exported a function, it will be called receiving one parameter, an object with these properties:

Property Description
IS_TTY True if current session is running on a TTY environment
IS_ROOT True if the current user is root
IP The current device's ip
BATTERY The current percentage of the battery (give or take...some OSs lie a little about it)
IS_CHARGING True if the device is connected and charging
GIT_STATUS The repository status. May be from -2 to 5, meaning:
-2: COMMITS DIVERGED
-1: COMMITS BEHIND
0: NO CHANGES
1: COMMITS AHEAD
2: UNTRACKED CHANGES
3: CHANGES TO BE COMMITTED
4: LOCAL AND UNTRACKED CHANGES
5: LOCAL CHANGES
GIT_SYMBOL A symbol representing the current position of the branch. Symbols can be:
"-": COMMITS BEHIND
"+": COMMITS AHEAD
"!": COMMITS DIVERGED
"*": UNTRACKED
"": Anything else
GIT_BRANCH The name of the current git branch
IS_WRITABLE True if the current user has write access to the current directory
colors A referece to the a chalk instance, allowing you to add colors if you need to

Use these data to decide how your exported object will be. You can use it, for example, to enable or disable parts of the $PS1, or to show some parts in different colors.

Check the documentation bellow to understand it better, how to customize your terminal using JavaScript.

After any change you make in your customized theme, you should see the difference just by hitting [ENTER] in your terminal.
If not...you can force it to reload using termtools reload or just the alias reload.

Customization options

You will export a literal object containing these options, or a function that returns such an object. You can extend a given theme, or the default theme will be used.

{
    extends: 'basic'
}

While the default theme will have a PS1 like the second image in this documentation, the basic theme will look like this:

Termtools basic theme

Completition (auto complete)

We will also add auto-complete for your git commands, and add a richer auto-complete for your npm commands as well.
For example, we can hint all the branch names of your repository, or all the scripts from your package.json.

aliases

An object containing the command as the key, and the instruction as the value.
For example:

{
    aliases: {
        foo: "echo bar"
    }
}

Will then, allow you to run in your terminal:

$ foo
bar

Some useful aliases to add, are telated to the the environment you use to work.
For example, let's say you keep all your projects under ~/projects/web/, you can create a alis for going there:

{
    aliases: {
        www: "~/projects/web/"
    }
}

Now, you can type www to go there.

Decorators

This will allow you to customize some of the decorators we will use in your PS1.
So far, they are:

  • pathSeparator
  • section
  • readOnly
  • git

You can use the code (\uCODE) for the following characters (available in the installed font).
For example, the code "e0a0" can be used as "\ue0a0":

Termtool fontforge
(imported from powerline nerd fonts plus)

Also, some other symbols and code you might find promising:

Termtools extra symbols

ps1

This is the part where you specify the rules for your PS1.
It has two customization options: parts and effects.
The effects are the style rules, applied for each part.

Parts

Every part of your PS1 has the enabled flag, allowing you to turn them on or off as you will.
Besides that, all the properties also accept a wrapper, which is a string with a "$1" in it.
For example, if in your "username" part, the wrapper is "[$1]", it will render "[felipe]" for a user named "felipe".
Some parts have their own special properties.

You can create any other part, and it may have the enabled, wrapper and content properties (like string parts). And yes, you can then customize them with effects as well.

The available parts and their special attributes are:

Part name Description Extra options
battery Shows the current battery state N/A
time The current time N/A
userName The currently logged user N/A
string Any given string you might wanna add content: The content of the string
machine The machine name N/A
path The current path (without basename) *Options escribed bellow
basename The current basename N/A
git If the current directory is a repository, show the git information about it N/A
entry The last character waiting for the user entry. Usually a "$" sign content: A given string for it
os The current OS
readOnly Shown when the current directory is readonly for the current user N/A
custom your own content: The string to be the content

The path part is special and has some very useful extra options:

Option Description Values
ellipsis Uses "…" to truncate the name of each directory in the path false or a Number, limiting the size to be ellipsed
cut Will cut/truncate part of the path, ensuring it will stay inside maxlength. If it was truncated, "…" will be used One of false, "left", "right" or "center"
maxLength The maximun size of the while path, is cut is enabled Number
Effects

For each part you used, you can apply effects.
The available effects are:

Option Description
color* The text color
bgColor* The background color
bold Sets text as bold
italic Tries to set the text as italic (not all terminals support it)
underline Underlines the text
dim Sets the text as dim
separator By default, will be the decorator you set as separator. If false, no separator will be used for that part. Can be used to customize the separator of one specific part of PS1

Values for both color and bgColor accept the colors from chalk. You can also use RGB colors starting with "#", for example #f00. But keep in mind that some hex values are not supported in some terminals.

Extending

It's javascript! So...you can extend parts like this, for example:

let osType = require('os').type().toLowerCase()
const OS_TYPE = osType == 'linux' ? '\ue712' : osType == 'darwin' ? '\ue711' : '\ue70f'

// ....

module.exports = function (data) {
    // ....
    parts: {
        customOS: { enabled: true, content: OS_TYPE, wrapper: '$1 ' }
    }
    // ....
}

And the results would be one of:

Termtools extending with OS

Just a heads up...we do have an os part already, that was just an example

Aliases

Alias Description
fixcamera Fixes the camera when it is not loading (a known bug triggered in Google Chrome)
ipin Shows the internal IP addess
ipout Shows the IP facing the public network
ip/ips Shows both internal and external IPs
aliases Shows the list of currently supported aliases
back Goes to the last path where you were
.. Equivalent to cd ..
cd.. Equivalent to cd ..
.2 Equivalent to cd ../..
.3 Equivalent to cd ../../..
.4 Equivalent to cd ../../../..
.5 Equivalent to cd ../../../../..
.6 Equivalent to cd ../../../../../..
.7 Equivalent to cd ../../../../../../..
ll A better listing of your files and directories
~: Goes to your HOME directory
root Goes to your root path (/)
www Goes to /var/www/
commit git commit -a
commitAll git add -A; git commit
gitlog Shows a more readable log for your git repo
gittree Shows a readable tree for your git repo
checkout git checkout. Used as checkout mybranch.
push git push origin. Use it like push master.
pull git pull origin
sizes Shows the size of your files and directories
flushDNS Flushes the DNSs
DSFiles_removal Removes all the .DS_Store files (recursivelly) in the current tree
hosts_editir Opens and editor for your hosts file
ff/findfile Searches for a file with the given name
fd/finddir Searches for a directory with the given name
h Shows the bash history
lh Lists only the hidden files
today Shows the date for today
now Shows the current time
ports Shows the currently pened ports
lsd Equivalent to ls but showing only directories
hide-desktop-icons Hide all the desktop icons (specially useful when presenting to an audience)
show-desktop-icons show all desktop icons
chromekill Kills all Google Chrome tabs to free some memory
afk Locks the screen, as you are Away From Keyboard
path Shows all the address in your $PATH, each one in a different line
show-hidden-files Show hidden files (MacOS only)
hide-hidden-files Hide hidden files (MacOS only)
ifactive Shows all the active network connections
amioffline Answers "Yes" if you are offline, and "No" otherwise
amionline Answers "Yes" if you are online, and "No" otherwise
desktop/desk Equivalent to cd ~/Desktop
docs/d/documents Equivalent to cd ~/Documents
downloads/down Equivalent to cd ~/Downloads
emptytrash Empty the Trash on all mounted volumes and the main HDD
pubkey Copies your public key to clipboard

Functions

Function Description Options
try Will try the following command and if it is not installed, will show a nicer message exiting with 0..
Ex:
try some command
or
try ls -la
.
-q: Executes the command if the program is installed, and does nothing if not(return value is 0)
-e: Returns 1 as the return value in case the program is not installed
-h: A full help description of the function
bold Echoes the following arguments in bold
line Writes a line (-) in terminal "": A string with one character to be used to draw the line.
Careful when using special characters as they will require quotes
doubleline Writes a double line (=) in terminal
dog Just like cat, but paginated and using line numbers Any argument you would use with cat
sizeof Gives you the size of a file, or the total size of a directory [path]: You can pass the path for the a file or directory
hierarchy Shows a tree of files ignoring node_modules and other temp files, using line
numbers, pages and colors.
Any extra argument you can pass into tree
extract Extracts any compressed files (works with any file with
extension tar.bz2, tar.gz, bz2, rar, gz, tar, tbz2, tgz, zip, Z, 7z)
pid Shows the PID for a given process name process name: You can a string or a regex, like pid /^node$/
about Shows info on the current serve/session/user
targz Create a .tar.gz archive, using zopfli, pigz or gzip for compression path: The path for the file to be compressed
googl/short Shortens a URL using goo.gl service path: The path for the file to be compressedpath: The path for the file to be shrinked
datauri Create a data URI from a file and copy it to the pasteboard path: The file to be copied as base64
isusingport Looks for any process currently using a given port port: The port you are looking for

Safety

We will also add some features for safety, like:

  • rm is now rm -i by default and will ask you if you are sure you want to remove a file (unless you use -f)
  • chgrp will ensure you keep your root path safe
  • chown will ensure you keep your root path safe

License

We use an MIT license, you can find it in our repository.

Code of Conduct

As everything else Nasc does, we follow a Code of Conduct.
Please refer to it in our repository.

Have a question or suggestion?

Ask your questions in our issues with the title starting with "[QUESTION]".
Be sure your searched for similar issues that might also have been already closed by then.
Send suggestions opening issues with the title starting with "[SUGGESTION]".

Influences

We noticed many well known developers share some of their aliases and customizations for terminal.
This has inspired us as well, bringing some of the best ideas to termtools.
Feel free to submit new ideas as well, by using the issues in this repository.

Some ideas for the aliases and functions were inspired by (or brought from):

Contribute

We are welcoming new themes and all the help we might get.
Let's get in touch :)