The Starship Prompt Offers Infinite Possibilities

[@MatanKushner]

Thank you on behalf of the Starship maintainers for shining a spotlight on our project! Your excitement for Linux is contagious. Keep up the great videos! 🙏

[@DistroTube]

Appreciate that! Keep up the great work on Starship!

[@ararune3734]

Oh no, just when I gave a little fizzaz to my zsh, now I'm gonna have to play with this

[@xwinglover]

It's a great project. Love my prompt.

[@robsku1]

@td EDIT: This comment was meant to be a comment to the video and to dt Wow, thanks for this - when the vid started I was thinking there probably won't be much more than can't be done with a static prompt written by hand if it's cross-shell compatible - I imagined some limited dynamic features, but you showed me! Not only does this seem to make designing even static prompt design so much easier and likeable - seems there's much more complex dynamic features than that what I was expecting, and from what I gather (not sure if it wasn't actually mentioned in the video and I just missed that - I have ADHD and was doing something else while watching this) from this video it will surprise me more if Starship Prompt isn't designed to also allow easily extending it's dynamic features you can code yourself. One question to DT: How do you get that color-ASCII art shown when you launch a new terminal to also show up again everytime you do `clear`? Do you have a shell function to show it in .bashrc or a scipt you call from it? And maybe you've aliased clear to something like `exec clear && show_art` or override `clear` with function of same name that runs those commands? It's a cool trick I first thought WTF, how is that possible, but I guess I easily figured out at least two ways to achieve it asking the question :D But still, how did you do that?

[@tailsorange2872]

It's about time for you to fork a shell project and call it "Chips" so that you can call on the "Fish" and "Chips" every day of the week

[@besnikrrustemi]

And twice on Sunday(s) !

[@soberhippie]

I watched your video where you introduced starship, and have been playing with it for a few days now. Nerd fonts really make it shine. Like, you can have actual language logos instead of generic lambda glyph or a snake emoji. And you can also write your own rules for starship in that same config file, like, display the go icon whenever you are in a $GOPATH subtree, not when there is a .go file in the current directory

[@yasserkerbache]

I love Starship. You can do some crazy cool ricing with it!

[@sprtwlf9314]

I really enjoy your terminal focused videos. They're fun. I always learn a lot and am inspired to dive into things I previously was hesitant about.

[@helloimatapir]

Spaceship works for me as I stick with ZSH. Starship is a better choice if you constantly change your shell.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Thank you for giving me the reason why I don't need Starship - because I've stuck with Bash for the past 20+ years without ever feeling the need to change it.

[@agaskew]

Never heard of this. This is what's great about Linux - endless possibilities

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

...and endless ways to waste those lovely CPU cycles too.

[@murtadha96]

I was literally JUST customising my starship config file just now!

[@ringo8410]

Thanks, DT! I installed the Starship snap and like it a *lot* better than Powerline. Much easier to customize and I like the looks of it in my terminal.

[@5ebastiancarlo5]

I "promptly" clicked on this video as soon as I saw it

[@RukshanVidurangaPerera]

Thank you so much for this. I was having trouble setting up prompts in zsh, fish and bash. I wanted them to look same in every place. This is so cool.

[@theodorealenas3171]

1:20 He indexed in his mind, and cached it, that the explanation of the tilde is "it represents the home directory". I'd need to come up with the phrase on run-time! I'd stumble and mumble! He had it ready! He pulls them out right at the right moment! Damn I underestimate how hard it is to explain technology until I have to.

[@n0kodoko143]

Thanks Derek! 🙏

[@jg7346]

Do you have oh my zsh install as well or how do u get autocomp and highlighting? What are the options basically?))

[@ruskiiiiilol]

Great video DT for Greece watching your videos

[@jr_Linux]

yea im guilty of the same thing. thanks to ur video i use starship as a nice theme bar in my terminal. i havenj't really changed it etiher. if it works no need to fix it. edit: lol 6:12 the powerline is what i use.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

I guess I am something of a "traditionalist" in trying to step away from using computers that constantly bombard my senses with lots of additional and spurious information that I probably don't need most of the time - whether its stuff going on in the title bar or a shell prompt that tells me my current shoe size. Maybe it's just me who simply enjoys the emptiness and "quiet" of an open terminal with a flashing prompt waiting for input with a prompt that just tells me who I am and where I am - and nothing else. I think people spend far too much time worrying about "bling" and trying to impress people looking over their shoulders rather than just getting down and using their computer systems for work or pleasure. It reminds me of Arnold Rimmer in the British "Red Dwarf" comedy series where he has to sit an exam that he has failed several times previously and ends up spending most of his revision time making a beautiful, colour-coded revision timetable to then realise that he has used up most of his revision time doing that.

[@theodorealenas3171]

I like a stream of information flowing from me to the computer, and then a stream of information flowing back, instead of a back and forth with the computer. Blank bash, tmux defaults, NeoVim default usage with little influence by plugins, no mouse. But have you seen the KZbin channel Bash Bunny? I'm a bit jealous my computer never looks like that.

[@anon_y_mousse]

I haven't seen any of the newer episodes, but the old ones from way back in the 80's and 90's were great.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@anon_y_mousse The first 6 seasons were really the best ones - after that it all felt a little "forced" with its comedy.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@theodorealenas3171 This concept of "streams of information" is a bit of a misnomer. Our concentration can only be on one thing at a time, even if we switch concentration between different things very rapidly. I didn't get my first computer, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, until I had already left school and got my first job. I was educated in a system using books and maybe a calculator - I was even taught how to use a slide rule for making approximations to the results of equations, for example. The teaching methodologies used taught me focus and concentration, and has ultimately left me with an extremely analytical mindset which means that if I am in "problem solving mode" - whether it's writing a BASH script or putting together an IKEA flatpack bookshelf - then that is what I am doing at the exclusion of all else. Therefore, being interrupted by other things going on around me when I am in such a mode is not something I tolerate and actually irritates me - likewise, if I am talking to someone and they are pretending to listen to me whilst playing on their phone is not something I tolerate either. It's simply polite for both parties to give full attention to an issue being discussed. Simply put, I like my computing environments to be "quiet and simple" and which do things when I want them to do it, not when they want me to do it. I de-Googled my Android devices for two reasons - firstly, because I am not allowing Google to surveil me but, secondly, because my devices now "shut the feck up" and don't keep hassling me for attention because some half-wit somewhere has posted up a kitten video. I even enjoy double the battery life on those same devices as an added bonus because they are not "phoning home" as much. Ultimately, the way my thought processes work and the way a millennial's or genx-er's thought processes work will be entirely different because the latter were brought up around computers and mobile phones controlling their actions far more than any did to me. Personally, I think the poor attention spans, poor grammar and punctuation, FOMO and impatience that I see in those younger generations is not a good thing.

[@mtothem1337]

My preference is to only have useful information in the prompt. Like exit codes are useful when you want to know how a program exited.

[@MH_VOID]

Same. Way I see it, the information I'm going to want to easily see 99% of the time should be in the left prompt, bonus stuff can go in RPROMPT or nowhere, colors are nice for making it easier to tell what's what, but there should always be different shaped stuff for the sections

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

I don't need to know how every single program exited. For those that I do, I just do "echo $?". It's a bit like not caring about the what the weather is like outside until I go to out for a walk or to the beach. I don't need to be bombarded with information that I don't need most of the time.

[@theodorealenas3171]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 absolutely. I'd go a step further and say, I don't want expected values to take up space. If I'm on the same folder for a while, it can abbreviate itself in the prompt to make space. If I switch a git branch, I do want the branch name on the prompt, but for one minute. Not that I know how to configure any of that but it will be a future side project.

[@mtothem1337]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 That's essentially what i do as well. I only print non-0 exits. Cause it's only then when i want to know what went wrong.

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@mtothem1337 That's entirely logical.

[@robsku1]

Hey dt!! Thanks, wow! I accidentally wrote this first as reply on another thread and not even addressed to you, so in case you missed it, here it is: Wow, thanks for this - when the vid started I was thinking there probably won't be much more than can't be done with a static prompt written by hand if it's cross-shell compatible - I imagined some limited dynamic features, but you showed me! Not only does this seem to make designing even static prompt design so much easier and likeable - seems there's much more complex dynamic features than that what I was expecting, and from what I gather (not sure if it wasn't actually mentioned in the video and I just missed that - I have ADHD and was doing something else while watching this) from this video it will surprise me more if Starship Prompt isn't designed to also allow easily extending it's dynamic features you can code yourself. One question to DT: How do you get that color-ASCII art shown when you launch a new terminal to also show up again everytime you do `clear`? Do you have a shell function to show it in .bashrc or a scipt you call from it? And maybe you've aliased clear to something like `exec clear && show_art` or override `clear` with function of same name that runs those commands? It's a cool trick I first thought WTF, how is that possible, but I guess I easily figured out at least two ways to achieve it asking the question :D But still, how did you do that? P.S. What's mildly annoying is that the official website install guide simply downloads a prebuilt binary (which might work on your linux, but does it? Especially if you're on older versions of packages than most distros have?) - nothing on building it from source (and making thus certain it has no missing dependencies) :/ Well, at least there's a GitLab link - ach, checked it out and have no idea how you're supposed to build it from source - or what language it's written in, the src directory has files with .rs suffix, and I've no idea what language it implies, the actual code did not look like any language I'm familiar with :/

[@robsku1]

Hey DT! Again! I came back now that I finally started trying it, and although it's unlikely I'll stick with that look, I tried the Pastel Powerline preset first (thought it'll be a good starting point for me to create my own style), and it worked great at first! But the moment I launched screen, it broke! Just one part of the prompt now has background color, the foreground colors aren't there at all, and the "nerd symbols" show wrong as well... I wonder what it might be? My first guess was that since I use Konsole and have COLORTERM set to "truecolor", maybe starship prompt (or this preset) is using the truecolor support of Konsole - because while screen still runs inside konsole, it will not send terminal escape command strings that it doesn't recognize to the underlying terminal. And it only has the xterm 256-color support. But then I also realized that it might explain the color mess-up, but it doesn't explain the character mess-up. If anyone has experience with Starship Prompt and `screen`, I'd like to hear about you! Does it work, or do you also have issues with it? And if you've had but managed to set it up so it works, what did you do? Anyone that could shed light to this problem, any help would be greatly appreciated! \o_

[@kingsmanvn07]

at 10:37 how do you highlight the same characters like ctrl+d in vscode

[@kristun216]

I use it to read .env for some projects that is multi tenant. When I'm in vim in the project and I toggle the terminal I can see what tenant my config is for at that time instead of having to check .env always

[@send2gl]

What does GIT stand for? Is it an abbreviation for something or a mnemonic? Done searches to no avail but admit didn't try too hard.

[@KeithBoehler]

I don't think it stands for anything. It is just a version control program to help with software development.

[@theodorealenas3171]

I don't know but it's good for puns.

[@anon_y_mousse]

As far as I can tell, Torvalds named it that because it's a homophone of "get" and an insult in British English. But I could find no definitive explanation for it so I'm left to assume that duality of reasons based on his statements.

[@batboy49]

I love starship prompt use it on everything (works on winblows too)

[@EdwardVarner]

What is the color test across the top?

[@myegane49]

could we have a introduction video on gnu/hurd, please, sir? how to install it? can we install guix with hurd from the beginning?

[@anon_y_mousse]

Is it actually usable yet?

[@myegane49]

@@anon_y_mousse there is no stable version but still I like to try the development version

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@myegane49 I hope you get it working either way. Would be pretty cool.

[@OctaviusPelagius]

I hate how Emacs (Doom Emacs) has issues displaying Nerd Fonts. Sometimes it displays them alright but most of the time it doesn't...

[@talbarak8861]

What is the colors theme that you are using? It seems very easy on the eyes.

[@ifanatical]

Is the cityscape/visualizer in your terminal a script? I'm not able to find it, but I like it a lot!

[@heroe1486]

Isn't that super slow ? I'm on Arch + zsh and with the default config a basic cd .config takes like between half a second and a second while it's usually nearly instant, I tried with Kitty and Alacritty. Edit : Just installed powerlevel10k and it's instant again

[@eritert]

What’s the overhead like compared to pure? Would i notice any slowdown when opening a terminal by using starship instead?

[@mathdothings]

Great vid DT. What tool are you using to provide autocomplete for the shell?

[@yomaldiaholson4577]

That's a default setting for the Fish shell

[@MH_VOID]

Starship looks kinda nice, but how well can it emulate a handwritten ZSH prompt? I don't want to lose any of the functionality or colors in mine

[@user-mfsc-2024]

what is that feature, when u type cd , .config/qtfile will autocomplete for you ?

[@patolorde]

How you did the city skyline thing?

[@bmmartin1684]

Where can i get the symbols to use to represent these languages,like the snake for python?

[@mrmarker98]

set your terminal's font to any nerd fonts patched one

[@BoopyTheFox]

Mmmm muh terminul (Much love btw ❤)

[@robsku1]

I wonder if this works with actual Bourne Shell - which, btw, is better for testing cross-shell shell-scripts than with bash POSIX compliancy mode. You can easily and quickly compile a Linux version from forked (but not functionally altered) version of original called Heirloom Bourne Shell - just search for it ;)

[@YannMetalhead]

Good video.

[@s0laret012]

I couldn't work with Starship. The lack of a transient prompt is a dealbreaker to me, however oh-my-posh is basically the same as starship which has me covered :)

[@anon_y_mousse]

Do you mean some sort of temporary prompt you setup and throw away? What would you use that for and why is a dynamically changing prompt not good enough for that purpose?

[@s0laret012]

@@anon_y_mousse i mean when u click enter in your terminal, that it doesn't show the full prompt but rather something like: `>> echo "Hi" Hi`

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@s0laret012 I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that after entering a command and hitting enter that it keeps you on the last line of output for the command? Or it doesn't output anything for the prompt string for you? Either would certainly be a bug.

[@FaridFaracli]

Which alacritty color scheme is this ?

[@AceofSpades5757]

I like starship, but I've had issues getting the git section to do what I want.

[@abhishek.rathore]

How do you get the rainbow bars everytime you launch or clear your terminal?

[@yomaldiaholson4577]

ASCII terminal header. It's pretty cool and you're welcome 😁

[@luccahuguet]

Starship & nushell & zellij & alacritty is the setup from the future

[@n0us3rn4m3s4v41l4bl3]

What is a "schill"?

[@DanMackAlpha]

this looks promising but I am annoyed I have to installed some extra fonts which then I'd have to vet for security concerns. thanks for doing the video. On fedora 37 for example, there are no nerd fonts in the standard repository. I'll also see what happens when I login from a server which doesn't have the fonts installed, looks like the prompt get's messed up a bit but still usable.

[@DanMackAlpha]

I will now retract my original statement. starship appears to work fine with fedora's default 'monospace' font so I think I may switch to using this afterall. So far, it seems to be much faster than using something like oh-my-zsh and the like which seem to be quite slow in some of my repositories.

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@DanMackAlpha Does Fedora's monospace font include a snake character, or lambda?

[@marioschroers7318]

Have you tried powerlevel-10k?

[@null11q]

It's zsh specific.

[@marioschroers7318]

@@null11q Oh, forgot about that. But yeah, I use zsh.

[@warhawk_yt]

That used to be his zsh theme until he switched to starship. He mostly uses fish as his shell though.

[@gutierrebraga8312]

Hey DT, hello from brazil.

[@scheimong]

14:27 I cannot believe you put [haskell] beneath j. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Maybe he learned the alphabet in reverse.

[@tobiadeniji6630]

Not a fan of fancy prompts but it's all good ...lol

[@vaibhavthakor928]

OUR config

[@elizabeththompson4424]

NOT in the Mint / Ubuntu Repositories

[@soanvig]

I have literally the same features using fish with plugins. Starship has a ton of useless features, that seem to be useful, but in reality they aren't.

[@DJ_Cthulhu]

My shell prompt. $

[@moneyfr]

SOMEONE SHARE his STARSHIP CONFIG

[@MerkDolf]

😃👌

[@Alex-lu4po]

Unfortunately, to me it is still unclear what problem starship solves.

[@GoogleAccount-ki1ww]

It looks truly fugly. I think the default look is for me.

[@MindoverMaster1]

connoisseur..

[@rajughorai7483]

Bit slower.

[@SlideRSB]

I don't want a soydev shell prompt.

[@anon_y_mousse]

In the near future everything will be Rust. We'll have plenty of eyerape going on, flashing lights, colors beyond what a human can see, and of course the obligatory loss of real functionality. Everything will look like a typical Twitter developer's desktop and just as much work will get done. People will spend one full year configuring their systems and then quit to work somewhere else because they don't feel their contributions are appreciated only to spend one more full year reconfiguring everything because they need to match the new company's colors only to then quit because they still don't feel their contributions are being appreciated. Infinite loops everywhere because why not, they're somehow more efficient... to write.

[@laughingvampire7555]

I don't like toml files, they are so windows

[@mridulranjan1069]

Useful video but you talk too much! :(

[@linuxstreamer8910]

thanks for showing me starship i now use the Pastel Powerline Preset & because i use fish i can just use the config.fish to add these lines starship init fish | source & starship preset pastel-powerline > ~/.config/starship.toml