This is my collection of zsh configurations. And since dozens of my friends are not familiar with the shell. So I make many newbie tips along this document.

Prerequisites

Meta Key

Many great shell key bindings are inheritant from Emacs and hence the Meta key is of good use. To enbale this, configure your iTerm2 at:

iTerm > Preferences > Profile > Keys

both options to +Esc. Now option keys act like Meta keys.

Installation

In the .zsh directory, call the ./INSTALL.sh to install it. The best practice is install .zsh folder under your home directory. Here is an example:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/robturtle/.zsh.git
cd .zsh
chmod +x INSTALL.sh
./INSTALL.sh

NOTE: If you haven’t install oh-my-zsh, the oh-my-zsh installer will run a new zsh shell after the installation finished. Please press Ctrl-D to quit this shell to make the INSTALL.sh continue.

This is based on Oh-my-zsh, if you didn’t installed it or ~/.oh-my-zsh/ is not found, the install script will install it automatically.

After the installation, you can simply restart your terminal to see the changes.

Custom settings

By default, you can store your custom configs in ~/.zsh.my.sh. Typically there are few variable you may be interested to change:

DEFAULT_USER

tell zsh your default user’s name so that you can log in without prompting current username

INSTALLER

the default is “brew install” for Mac users. If you’re a Linux user you must change this to your own package install command to make sure the auto-install facility works.

my_zsh_mod

specify plugins you want to load. You can view all available plugins in plugins folder.

MY_JAVA_CP

used in java plugin. indicates where you preferred to store downloaded jar files. default value is “~/include/java/”

ZSH_THEME

my favorite is “agnoster” but it need fonts installed. read the Powerline Theme below for details.

The examples are:

#!/bin/zsh
# file: ~/.zsh.my.sh
DEFAULT_USER=jack
INSTALLER='sudo apt-get install'
my_zsh_mod=(python java)
MY_JAVA_CP='~/include/java/'
ZSH_THEME="agnoster" # make sure you've installed the specail fonts before setting it

During the installation process, the script will ask you some common settings. You can type in the value, or, just press enter to apply the default value.

Added Functions

I’ve collects several good functions from the web. Amount them I think there are 2 functions totally changed my life in the shell.

The first one is ranger – a file system manager in command line. Its key bindings are simulating the vim. Its common used keys are listed at the ranger section.

The second one is a shell history searching utility which make benifits from an interactive querying lib – percol. With this you type some partial contents, separates keywords with whitespaces. And then the percol will filter the results for you.

name	function	rank
Ctrl+R	search shell history	Killer
Ctrl-S	file manager	Killer
ff	file partial searching	Helper
pclip	stdin into clipboard	Helper

Powerline Theme

Special fonts

The special fonts is to support the pertty display of powerline theme like:

Install the powerline fonts following instructions below:

1. First, Download and install fonts from here
2. Then, configure your iTerm2 fonts settings

iTerm > Preferences > Profile > Text

change both Regular Font and Non-ASCII Font.

Change the theme

Now you can switch your theme into this pretty powrline theme. In your ~/.zsh.my.rc, add this line:

# file: ~/.zsh.my.sh
... # all other variables
ZSH_THEME="agnoster"

Then restart your shell.

iTerm2 Color theme

I use solarized-light and solarized-dark theme in the iTerm2. They are automatically downloaded into your ~/Download/ directory when you run the INSTALL.sh. Double click them you can import this color theme into the iTerm2.

To switch to this theme, go to iTerm2’s preference:

iTerm > Preferences > Profile > Colors > Load Presets

And choose “Solarized Light” or “Solarized Dark”

As an advise, I suggest you only use the dark color theme when the environment is dark or you have a monitor with bad quality.

Keyboard shortcuts

For newbies

Common Emacs shortcuts in shell

Most of the shell supports Emacs key bindings by default.

Let ‘C’ stands for Ctrl, ‘M’ stands for ‘Meta’.

key	function	mutation	function
C-A	beginning of line
C-E	E-nd of line
C-K	K-ill to end of line
C-U	U-ntype words
C-D	D-elete forward	M-D	one word
BACKSPACE/C-H	delete backward	M-BACKSPACE	one word
C-F	move F-orward one char	M-F	one word
C-B	move B-ackward one char	M-B	one word
C-P	P-revious command
C-N	N-ext command
C-L	clear screen

Being familiar with the Meta shortcuts will makes your shell using more effective.

Common vim shorcuts in shell

in man, less, these vim style key bindings are also usable.

key	function
j	down
k	up
h	left
l	right
C-D	page D-own
C-U	page U-p
gg	first line
G	last line
slash	search

ranger

key	function
SPACE	mark/unmark
m	add bookmark
`	goto bookmark
j/k/h/l	navigates
yy	copy marked files
dd	cut marked files
pp	paste
:delete	delete marked files
:mkdir	make directory
zh	toggle show hidden files
q	quit

git

name	function	rank
gitkall	show all branches in gitk	Helper

Troubleshooting

js module: npm ERROR: permission denied

In my js mod file I prefer use npm install -g without sudo. Hence you may probably either remove “js” from my_zsh_mod in ~/.zsh.my.sh or fix the permission of the installation destination.

For Mac users, you may fix it by the command like chown -R ${USER} /usr/local regarding to brew’s convention.

python module: Everytime I open a new shell, it tries to install some python packages with pip

I use `python -c “import ${package}”` to check if the package is installed. If you encounter this situtation, that means you didn’t configure your Python import path properly. Please remove “python” from my_zsh_mod in ~/.zsh.my.sh until you read about the Python’s sys.path and configure it right.