Bash Color Tools

bash-color-tools was created to solve a two problems that there were no simple existing solutions for:

Bash Prompt Color Themes

• I wanted an easy way to modify, set, and save Color Bash Prompt setups. The standard 8 colors are simply ugly, so being able to have hundreds of colors to choose from was a must. Plus, being able to easily and simply change the colors at will, ideally by X Color Name, or a standard hex or decimal value would also be great.

Color Echo command

• I wanted an easy to use full-color echo command for use in scripts that worked just like echo, but could output in full color - not just the boring 8 colors that most HOW-TOs would teach you how to generate. And it had to insulate me from those horrible escape codes! Ideally, it could output those codes un-evaluated, for setting into variables if desired, say to put into the $PS1 variable.

I tried a few python color prompt scripts first. They looked pretty cool, but the lag was unbearable. It needed it to be lightweight and fast. It definitely shouldn't need to load another separate script interpreter to execute it. It simply had to be in clean, tight bash to give the lowest latency script performance possible.

So, this is exactly what bash-color-tools sets out to provide:

'prompt'

• A full-color Bash Prompt theme framework that's easily customizable, and uses theme plugins to allow you to easily change the colors of every prompt string element, extend existing themes, or even create your own themes by starting off with the provided theme template and going from there. There's instructions in the examples directory to help you with that. Provides the ability to quickly toggle between the different themes. Also allows low-color mode themes for the Linux Terminal. If you create a cool theme, let me know and I'll add it in.

'face'

• A full-color echo-like command with all the semantics of echo, plus extensions for background and forground color designation, and can even output raw escape coded strings if you need them (which, as it turns out, prompt does).

'_face'

• A sourceable library for your scripts, so all invocations of face come from memory, rather than running the command off disk.

Standard Color Bash Prompt Themes:

• 'progit' is the default theme, and provides a very full-featured git status dashboard when inside a repository, and the date/time and current system load data when in a regular directory. It automatically 'fuzzy-truncates' (adjustable length and fuzzyness values) both the current dir path and the branch names to keep the prompt at a resonable length. The git dashboard shows the number of untracked files, index vs. tree status, merge status, commit status, etc., and the branch field will indicate if the remote is out of sync with your current tree. When your tree is up to date, it shows the current branch, and the standard time/date and system load header. This is quite possibly the most extensive git info in any prompt anywhere, while still being very fast and unobtrusive.

• 'git' is progit's predecessor, and not quite as fully featured. It does provide the basics though, and is a bit faster if you have a low powered machine.

• 'giles' is an homage to Giles Orr, the original Bash Prompt Howto author.

• 'vms' is an homage to the VMS Operating System I used so many years ago.

Screenshots

Manpage

Tested on Linux and Mac OSX (after installing bash v4.x)