The PS1 env var controls the look of the terminal prompt. In zsh the env var is also call PROMPT. Prompt variables for zsh can be found here.
Some Easy Prompt Variables
- Display the current directory:
%~ - Display date and time:
%D %T - Display a newline:
$'\n' - Display username:
%n - Display hostname
%Mdisplays the full hostname%mdisplays the hostname up to the first.
Display the current git branch
This is not easy. There is a zsh function called vcs_info that exists in the env. You need to enable its usage by using autoload -Uz vcs_info. According to the docs, the -U flag suppresses alias expansion. I guess this is to prevent a scenario where you wrote an alias independently that happened to be the name of a variable used within the vcs_info function itself. It could then alias-expand into something not intended. The -z flag indicates that you should autoload the function in a zsh friendly way, as opposed to a ksh friendly way. I don't know why that wouldn't be assumed, but I'm trusting this blog post. This is step one, and should be added to .zshrc.
autoload -Uz vcs_info
...
Now you need to run the vcs_info function each time you display the prompt. To do this, use pre_cmd, which is a hook function that executes right before the prompt is displayed, and is built in to zsh for just this purpose.
autoload -Uz vcs_info
precmd() { vcs_info }
...
Once executed, you now have access to an env var that tells you the branch you are on. You first need to set the option to allow for variable substitution in the prompt, setopt prompt_subst, and then add the variable to the prompt. Make sure to use single quotes, it affects the way substitutions happen (I don't fully understand it, though). Here is a prompt with just the branch set:
autoload -Uz vcs_info
precmd() { vcs_info }
setopt prompt_subst
export PROMPT='${vcs_info_msg_0_} c> '
In it's current state the output will look like this on master: (git)-[master]- c>. To format the output, you will need to use zstyle (docs here). It's a bit magical, and I leaned heavily on this blog post to build my intuition on syntax here, but basically you need to tell zstyle how to format the output for your vcs of choice, e.g., git. I just want the branch name, so I'm using zstyle ':vcs_info:git*' formats "%b". So, all summed up, with the rest of the prompt represented by [content]:
autoload -Uz vcs_info
zstyle ':vcs_info:git*' formats "%b"
precmd() { vcs_info }
setopt prompt_subst
export PROMPT='[content]${vcs_info_msg_0_}[content]'
Color
This is a strange syntax. Basically, an %F with color specification, e.g., %F{red} starts a colored section, and %f ends a colored section. Prompt syntax: %F{color_name}[content to color]%f. E.g., to display the current directory, %~, in red, you'd write %F{red}%~%f.
Example Prompt
In ~/.zshrc, with all the above notes combined:
autoload -Uz vcs_info
zstyle ':vcs_info:git*' formats "%b"
precmd() { vcs_info }
setopt prompt_subst
export PROMPT=$'\n''%F{blue}%~%f %F{red}${vcs_info_msg_0_}%f'$'\n''%F{cyan}%D %T%f '