#308 Oh My ZSH

Yippi! It just crashed my environment... I'm using rvm if that makes a difference:

bundle
/Users/kai/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p290/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/dependency.rb:247:in `to_specs': Could not find bundler (>= 0) amongst minitest-1.6.0, rake-0.8.7, rdoc-2.5.8

Any Ideas?

Hi Ryan.

Regarding to your c() _c() example, you can do the same thing just doing :

cdpath=(. ~/Railscasts)

It adds given paths to current directory path so all files and directories in ~/Railscasts are available from anywhere just typing : cd some_dir_in_railscasts_dir

That's a native future of ZSH so why bother reimplementing it.

I'm already using the dotfiles from ryans github site. Is it worth for me to switch to using this and have to move all my custom stuff?

I worry that approaching zsh like this will be like approaching vim via Janus. When I was a Janus user I couldn't tell you what was a feature of Janus' configuration or plugins and what was a native feature of vim. It wasn't until I started my own vim configuration from scratch that I really started to understand what was going on.

OH MY! It has broken my rvm differently from 4ware's report.

upon opening a shell, if I try to access a gemset like I usually do: rvm @myapp I get the following:

ERROR: Unknown ruby interpreter string component: 'ruby 1.9.2 p180'

Has this happened to anyone else?

Thanks!

thx for this episode - I'm leaving bash for greener pastures.

Question: Anyone know what the %p escape is doing in the default prompt? Here's the whole thing:

PROMPT='%{$fg_bold[red]%}➜ %{$fg_bold[green]%}%p %{$fg[cyan]%}%c %{$fg_bold[blue]%}$(git_prompt_info)%{$fg_bold[blue]%} % %{$reset_color%}'

I don't see any references to %p in man zshmisc and it doesn't seem like anything is being displayed there on any of my prompts... Anyway, just a curiosity.

Thanks for re-introducing ZSH to me, Ryan. I used to use zsh but got lazy when I switched to a new machine. On bash, I used bash_it for adding zsh like capabilities to bash. One of the plugins I really liked is z-zsh (https://github.com/sjl/z-zsh). I just added it to my custom set of plugins.

As an FYI, I use ZSH in windows with cygwin just fine. It's definitely slower than under *nix, but it works and makes windows development much more... possible. You'll need to use the manual install method, however.

I really like how easy it is to add highlighting to my prompt. Incase anyone is interested in some basic color configuration look at my gist.

If nothing is running when I open a new tab (cmd + t) from ZSH, it is in the directory of the previous tab. However, if my rails server is running and I open a new tab, it defaults to my home directory. Any suggestions on how to get consistent behaviour? I would prefer to always have the previous tabs location.

@rbates
Is the "rbates.zsh-theme" shown in this screencast the theme you use in virtually all of your screencasts? If not, please show us "the original - the one and only rbates zsh-theme".

Thank you :)

Thanks Ryan, another great Railscast.

For the people commenting about oh-my-zsh vs. vanilla zsh, I highly recommend Thoughtbot's dotfiles scripts, sets up a very nice zsh environment as well as an awesome .vimrc + vim plugins.

Does this install zsh for iTerm2? Or will this only work for Terminal users?

How do you get the delete key to work on a Macbook pro? The default key binding sends something other than delete. Adding bindkey "^[[3~" delete-char to a custom config file doesn't do it.

Edit: The delete key seems to be deleting one character at a time as it should, but the cursor moves forward when it is hit--very confusing. Am I the only one seeing this?

Edit: Okay, so declaring my terminal as 'vt100' instead of 'xterm-color' as it was before appears to fix the delete cursor issue along with a couple of other oddities.

Anyone having issues with rspec/cucumber no longer printing out colors after zsh install?

Anyone having issues with vim and gui mode?

When I open vim in terminal it says:
CSApprox needs gui support - not loading

Any idea how to make it with gui support?

Hi there,
My Term stays white backgrounded, colors change, but not all,
only if I switch the theme in OS X Terminal Settings to another term,
then the theme switches to the text and terminal color of OS X choice.

anyone knows, why colors are not switched properly?

Hi Ryan,
i've installed your dot files on my other machine the other day. The plugins dir does nit seem to be loaded. Where shall i put my custom plugins?

• Kai

I am new to Mac but I noticed that you don't need zsh to have the feature that whenever you open a new tab in the terminal, it will land in the same directory from which you make the new tab. Does anyone else also get that?

RVM has a helpful page on integration with ZSH:
http://beginrescueend.com/integration/zsh/

It recommends not using the ZSH bundler plugin and adding __rvm_project_rvmrc to the bottom of .zshrc if using iTerm2+"Reuse Previous Tab's Directory"

Anyone else having trouble with shortcuts in zsh on Lion? eg after keying option-b (go back one word), other shortcuts like ctrl-e (go to end) no longer work. Delete and option-delete don't work at all. Terminal is configured with "Use option as meta key" checked. I tried @ErikHick's vt100 suggestion but that didn't help. I'm not using oh-my-zsh, just plain zsh with thoughtbot/laptop settings.

For people having problems installing it on Fedora (15/16 Live CD) and my own future reference:

• Install zsh: sudo yum install zsh
• wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/raw/master/tools/install.sh -O - | sh

note: the curl version somehow did not work on my Fedora 16 (it worked on Fedora 15 though)

• which zsh => /bin/zsh

• chsh -s /bin/zsh

or just chsh and choose the shell.

• Logout / Restart

• change .zshrc as mentioned by Ryan.

• Copy rvm specific stuff from .bashrc to .zshrc

• rvm --default use gemsetname (e.g 1.9.2@rails3)

Hi Ryan,
thanks for this Railscast, loving zsh.

But I would certainly add a note regarding Railscast #66 Custom Rakes. You need to add this in the .zshrc file:

alias rake="noglob rake"

I was using zsh for a while when I first needed to use a custom rake command with parameters I had built. I couldn't figure what was wrong and it took me a while to see that it was not an error in the rake file.

Thanks
Fred

Hi! Another great episode Ryan :)

I've just watched this (a little late I know) and after installing
oh-my-zsh I noticed that I lost access to the history on interactive ruby console and also rails console. I remember (maybe I'm wrong) that after I closed a rails console session, I was able to access the last commands via the arrow keys when a new session was started.

Is it me o oh-my-zsh can't handle this? Isn't a big deal, just curious if is it possible.

Thanks again :)

I've seen a lot of confusion about the various initialization files for shells. So I wanted to share the Startup Files page from zsh.sourceforget.net:

There are five startup files that zsh will read commands from:

$ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
$ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
$ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
$ZDOTDIR/.zlogin
$ZDOTDIR/.zlogout

If ZDOTDIR is not set, then the value of HOME is used; this is the usual case.

.zshenv is sourced on all invocations of the shell, unless the -f option is set. It should contain commands to set the command search path, plus other important environment variables. .zshenv should not contain commands that produce output or assume the shell is attached to a tty.

.zshrc is sourced in interactive shells. It should contain commands to set up aliases, functions, options, key bindings, etc.

.zlogin is sourced in login shells. It should contain commands that should be executed only in login shells.

.zlogout is sourced when login shells exit.

.zprofile is similar to .zlogin, except that it is sourced before .zshrc. .zprofile is meant as an alternative to .zlogin for ksh fans; the two are not intended to be used together, although this could certainly be done if desired.

.zlogin is not the place for alias definitions, options, environment variable settings, etc.; as a general rule, it should not change the shell environment at all. Rather, it should be used to set the terminal type and run a series of external commands (fortune, msgs, etc).

Ryan, I assume you used iTerm2 before you switched back to the OSX Terminal? If so, this option for preserving the directory you were in, can be done in iTerm2 also, it's in Preferences - Profile - General - Working Directory - Advanced Configuration (There I set it to $HOME when opening new windows and to the previous sessions directory on new tabs and split panes. :-)

I needed to use chsh to change the default shell after installation:

chsh -s /bin/zsh

I also installed zsh itself using homebrew and oh-my-zsh afterwards via the wget. It's kind of silly that oh-my-zsh isn't just in homebrew.

Any other plugins you guys like?

In case anyone else had trouble maintaining the current directory when opening a new tab, I wrote the following plugin:

# Tell the terminal about the working directory at each prompt.

update_terminal_cwd() {
    # Identify the directory using a "file:" scheme URL,
    # including the host name to disambiguate local vs.
    # remote connections. Percent-escape spaces.
local SEARCH=' '
local REPLACE='%20'
local PWD_URL="file://$HOSTNAME${PWD//$SEARCH/$REPLACE}"
printf '\e]7;%s\a' "$PWD_URL"
}

precmd_functions+='update_terminal_cwd'

Then just call the plugin in your .zshrc

If you're having a problem where the theme's prompt isn't displaying correctly, just check you haven't brought in an errant PS1 prompt from your .bash_profile (or elsewhere)