cpp-gitbash-powerline

A gitbash-powerline implemented in C++ using libgit2. Provides several information regarding the git repository currently navigated into such as:

• current branch + commitID or showing that you are on a detached HEAD
• how many commits the current branch is ahead/behind of its origin reference
• modified, staged, untracked files if not switched off with '--no-status'
• warning if on detached HEAD and modified files are present

Using

Install and configure a Powerline Font

For being able to use the binary as it is you do need to setup a font that supports the unicode characters being used. You can find the font I am using in setup.

In case of Windows, to activate the font, you will need to modify your ~/.minttyrc. Here an example content with a color schema:

BoldAsFont=no
Font=DejaVu Sans Mono for Powerline
BoldAsColour=yes
FontHeight=13
ForegroundColour=248,248,242
BackgroundColour=40,42,54
Black=0,0,0
BoldBlack=40,42,53
Red=255,85,85
BoldRed=255,110,103
Green=80,250,123
BoldGreen=90,247,142
Yellow=241,250,140
BoldYellow=244,249,157
Blue=202,169,250
BoldBlue=202,169,250
Magenta=255,121,198
BoldMagenta=255,146,208
Cyan=139,233,253
BoldCyan=154,237,254
White=191,191,191
BoldWhite=230,230,230
Term=xterm-256color
Transparency=off
OpaqueWhenFocused=no

In case of Unix, you will have the best experience if you change your terminal color-shema to the same colors defined as the given colors in .minttyrc. I recommend playing around with the colors that in the end it just looks good (e.g. use gpick to find the right colors so that the prompt symbol has transparent background).

.bashrc adaptions to call the executable

We need to manuplate the PS1 variable of our bash to call our executable and saving the result in a variable. Since printing Unicode can be messy on Windows, I decided to leave it to the bash itself to interprete the unicode sequences. Therefore, I am calling echo -e <binary-result>. For large repositories, the repository status information can be switched off and on, since a git status can take several seconds (even though the implementation with libgit2 is faster then a normal git status on the command line!). For that purpose, the following .bashrc example also defines a small function to be able to switch the status of files in the index and in the working tree dynamically and defining a short alias for it.

GITBASH_POWERLINE_STATUS=
function _update_ps1() {
   PS1_CONTENT="$(<path-to-gitbash-binary> $? $GITBASH_POWERLINE_STATUS 2> /dev/null)"
   PS1="$(echo -e $PS1_CONTENT) "
}


PROMPT_COMMAND="_update_ps1; $PROMPT_COMMAND"


function gitbash_powerline_switch_status() {
    if [ "$GITBASH_POWERLINE_STATUS" = --no-status ] ; then
        GITBASH_POWERLINE_STATUS=
    else
        GITBASH_POWERLINE_STATUS=--no-status
    fi
}

alias switch_status=gitbash_powerline_switch_status

Compiling

Linux (Ubuntu as example)

• install openssl: sudo apt install libssl-dev
• install build-essentials: sudo apt install build-essentials
• install cmake: sudo apt install cmake

mkdir build && cd build cmake .. cmake --build .

Windows

• I did compile with msvc 16 which is shipped with Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition

mkdir build && cd build cmake .. cmake --build .