alas

alas can set your Alacritty scheme.

Why

The Alacritty terminal emulator previous to 0.13.0 used yaml files for configuration. There are large collections of color schemes and configuration files available online. I previously used a single file to store all of my color schemes and used a bash script to list color schemes by pattern matching. The active color scheme was changed using search/replace.

The migration to toml configuration, while a definite improvement, left my previous strategy for color scheme selection defunct. The built-in Alacritty migration tools, can effectively convert yaml to toml. But now my color scheme management tools need to marshal/unmarshal toml, deal with duplicate keys, and covert table names.

While doing this, I found there were other aspects of configuration that I wanted to also improve; supporting all Alacritty directory locations, changing the font, setting bell color, setting tty color strings, etc. This utility can perform several basic functions an Alacritty user might want.

Why Not

Many color schemes are distributed as individual files containing a single color scheme, such as dracula.toml. These files will use the table [colors] inside the file. In most cases, it's much less painful to simply change the import path to the individual file in alacritty.toml if needing to change colors. For Alacritty users with color scheme files organized this way, a shell script may be more appropriate.

Installation

Release

Navigate to the Releases section, download and run the latest binary for your system architecture. Alternatively, build alas for your system from the source tarball. Install Go if not already present on your system.

Clone

You may also clone the main branch of the project, and build the project that way. Place the resulting binary in your $PATH or run locally.

code statistics

===============================================================================
 Language            Files        Lines         Code     Comments       Blanks
===============================================================================
 Go                      8         1089          938           51          100
===============================================================================
 Total                   8         1089          938           51          100
===============================================================================

Usage

alas --help

Usage: alas
  -l, -list
        return a list of available color schemes
  -r, -random
        apply a random color scheme
  -b, -bell
        set bell color to a base-8 color or color scheme property
  -p, -print
        return string data from <colorscheme> (no input returns current)
  -f, -font
        apply <font>
  -F, -fonts
        return a list of available fonts
  -t, -tty
        convert color scheme into sourceable shell script for tty colors
  -m, -mode
        return if color scheme is a light or dark mode scheme
  -x, -clear
        clear current color settings and use default
  -h, -help
        print help for alas

Example: "alas <colorscheme>" to apply a color scheme

File Location

The program will read all toml files inside the subdirectory /colorschemes in any valid Alacritty configuration directory. For example, these files will all be read if an alacritty.toml file is present in the parent directory. If you have existing colorschemes in toml files, they should be placed in a /colorschemes.

$HOME/.config/alacritty/colorschemes/myColors.toml
$HOME/.config/alacritty/colorschemes/oldColors.toml
$HOME/.config/colorschemes/otherColors.toml
$HOME/colorschemes/crazyColors.toml

Alacritty.toml

The user must have an alacritty.toml file present in valid Alacritty configuration directory. This utility will not edit alacritty.toml directly. Instead it will create or write to colors.toml and fonts.toml in the same location. The alacritty.toml file must import these files for changes to take effect.

Add the two files

# alacritty.toml

import = [ 
	"~/.config/alacritty/colors.toml",
	"~/.config/alacritty/fonts.toml",
]

Color Schemes

Each color scheme should use its own unique name for the toml table. This is the case when using the Alacritty migration tool on a yaml-based color scheme. The table [colors] should not be used in color scheme files, as it is used by Alacritty to set the active color scheme. Doing so will return a "duplicate table" error.

example

[midboxlight.bright]
black = "0x928374"
blue = "0x076678"
cyan = "0x427b58"
green = "0x79740e"
magenta = "0x8f3f71"
red = "0x9d0006"
white = "0x3c3836"
yellow = "0xb57614"

[midboxlight.normal]
black = "0xE6D8AD"
blue = "0x458588"
cyan = "0x689d6a"
green = "0x98971a"
magenta = "0xb16286"
red = "0xcc241d"
white = "0x7c6f64"
yellow = "0xd79921"

[midboxlight.primary]
background = "0xfbf1c7"
foreground = "0x3c3836"

Alacritty's migration tool will not automatically handle duplicate color scheme table names. This can occur if a file, or multiple files have the same color scheme, or at least the same color scheme name string when converted to toml.

file tree

My $HOME/.config/alacritty/. I have two toml files that contain color schemes custom.toml for those I create and internet.toml for others that I find posted elsewhere. You can have any number of toml files in that subdirectory.

├── alacritty.toml
├── colorschemes
│   ├── custom.toml
│   └── internet.toml
├── colors.toml
├── fonts.toml
├── keybindings.toml
└── ttyscheme.sh

Tips

List available color schemes.
Pipe the color scheme list into fzf and set the chosen scheme.
Pipe the color scheme list into fzf, set the chosen scheme, preview selection.

alas -l
alas $(alas -l | fzf)
alas $(alas -l | fzf --preview='alas {}')

Pipe the font list into fzf and set the chosen font (requires fc-list).

alas -f $(alas -F | fzf)

Make Alacritty bell color red, or match it to another property.

alas -b red
alas -b cursor cursor
alas -b primary foreground

Set your tty colors to match your alacritty theme.

alas -tty

Source the created bash script in your .bashrc so tty colors match Alacritty.

if [ "$TERM" == "linux" ]; then
	if [ -f "$HOME/.config/alacritty/ttyscheme.sh" ]; then
		source "$HOME/.config/alacritty/ttyscheme.sh"
	fi
fi

Apply new color scheme each day by adding a cron entry with crontab -e

0  3  *  *  *  /home/human/.local/bin/alas --random

Contributing

Bug reports, or any form of constructive feedback is appreciated.

here's a color scheme for making all the way to the end!

[Plumbus.bright]
black = "#2E1A31"
blue = "#7269B8"
cyan = "#9062C4"
green = "#CD67C6"
magenta = "#A30061"
red = "#73002D"
white = "#E5C9E9"
yellow = "#A000BA"

[Plumbus.cursor]
cursor = "#736E7D"
text = "#050014"

[Plumbus.normal]
black = "#1F1720"
blue = "#77617B"
cyan = "#C1AEC4"
green = "#770E87"
magenta = "#9F82A3"
red = "#502659"
white = "#E7E0E8"
yellow = "#564559"

[Plumbus.primary]
background = "#130E14"
foreground = "#D2C5D4"

ndsizeif/alas