When it comes to customizing your Bash prompt to give you more information about the status of a Git repository, there are a lot of options out there. This post covers using the built-in options that ship with Git, as opposed to a third-party alternatives like this or this.
Once Git is installed, all you need to do is:
- Load the
git-prompt.shfile (comes with Git) in your~/.bashrcor~/.profilefile - Add
$(__git_ps1)somewhere in your bash prompt variable (look forPS1in that same files)
The current branch name will always be displayed. However, there are a few other options you can use to add more than just the current branch name to your prompt. The available configurations are not easily Google-able, so I sifted through the source and listed them here. The available options are:
| Option | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE | any nonempty value | shows * or a + for unstaged and staged changes, respectively |
GIT_PS1_SHOWSTASHSTATE | any nonempty value | shows $ if there are any stashes |
GIT_PS1_SHOWUNTRACKEDFILES | any nonempty value | shows % if there are any untracked files |
GIT_PS1_SHOWUPSTREAM | auto | shows <, >, <>, or = when your branch is behind, ahead, diverged from, or in sync with the upstream branch, respectively |
(alternatively to auto, a space-delimited list of the following options) | ||
verbose | show number of commits ahead/behind (+/-) upstream | |
name | if verbose, then also show the upstream abbrev name | |
legacy | don't use the '--count' option available in recent versions of git-rev-list | |
git | always compare HEAD to @{upstream} | |
svn | always compare HEAD to your SVN upstream | |
GIT_PS1_DESCRIBE_STYLE | (determines the style of the current commit when in a detached HEAD state, when set to one of the following values) | |
contains | relative to newer annotated tag (e.g., v1.6.3.2~35) | |
branch | relative to newer tag or branch (e.g., master~4) | |
describe | relative to older annotated tag (e.g., v1.6.3.1-13-gdd42c2f) | |
default | exactly matching tag |
Here’s how you might put it all together in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile file:
# First, load up the git-prompt.sh file that ships with Git. You # might consider copying it to your home folder first. On my Mac # OS X (Mavericks) setup, the file resides in # /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/share/git-core/. test -f ~/git-prompt.sh && . ~/git-prompt.sh # Then, set the options as desired. Remember that the current # branch name is displayed no matter what. export GIT_PS1_SHOWSTASHSTATE=true export GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE=true export GIT_PS1_SHOWUNTRACKEDFILES=true export GIT_PS1_SHOWUPSTREAM="auto" # Finally, add $(__git_ps1) to the prompt variable. That's it! PS1="\u@\h \w\$(__git_ps1) \$ " Here is how the prompt might look:
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