Terminal config for ZSH

A minimal config for ZSH without relying on oh-my-zsh. Less bloated, with important functionality perserved.

The goal is to maintain most of the functionality combined with an extremely fast start up time, since waiting for new shells to load while working is an annoying experience.

Better terminal commands

This config aliases some default commands to use specific options. It also alias a few of them to use new external versions. Read more below.

External commands

Default commands replaced with new versions:

1. exa - improved 'ls'
2. bat - improved 'cat'
3. zioxide - improved 'cd'

Potential future commands

Waiting to see if there is a need for these:

1. zenith - improved 'htop' or similar
2. tealdeer - tldr for man pages

Creating a plugins directory

This config expects the following directory $HOME/.zsh_plugins to exist and to contain the following plugins:

Main plugins

1. zsh-syntax-highlighting
2. zsh-autosuggestions

Clone them in the $HOME/.zsh_plugins directory via git. Plugins are loaded last.

Potential future plugins

Waiting to see if there is a need for these:

1. ripgrep - search directories by pattern
2. zinit -fast ZSH plugin manager
3. batgrep - add bat to ripgrep

Deprecated plugins

I've used these before in the past but haven't really found them as useful. There might be better alternatives out there, and the latest .zshrc doesn't load them anymore.

1. key-bindings - oh-my-zsh keybindings
2. history - oh-my-zsh history config
3. completion - oh-my-zsh tab completion

Install these with something like wget in the same $HOME/.zsh_plugins directory.

Additional plugins can be found in the awesome-zsh-plugins repo.

Managing node

This shell config relies on fnm to manage node, install via brew install fnm. I've found fnm to be significantly faster and more performant than older equivalents like nvm.

Theming

Spaceship vs. Starship

I've experimented with both. Starship is significantly faster. The prompt is essentially lag free, whereas Spaceship had slight, but noticeable, lag on my machine.

This config relies on the starship theme. Install it via brew by running brew install starship. For other installation methods, consult the starship repo.

Starship config

Create a file in $HOME/.starship/config.toml for the config file, or set the location on line 156 in this .zshrc file.

Other dependencies

The di docker command relies on jq.

Sources

A lot of the configuration was drawn from two major sources:

1. https://sourabhbajaj.com/mac-setup/iTerm/zsh.html
2. https://tjay.dev/howto-my-terminal-shell-setup-hyper-js-zsh-starship/