Starship: the easy prompt config

Starship.rs is a little tool that I stumbled upon thanks to Jeff Triplett which generates PROMPT variables for various shells based on a simple and easy to read configuration file. The goal here is to have the same configuration available independent of what shell you’re using, be it ZSH, BASH, or something else entirely.

All you have to do, is to install starship (e.g. using Homebrew if you’re on macOS) and then add it to your shell:

$ eval "$(starship init zsh)"

Configuration then happens through ~/.config/starship.toml. You basically configure a set of module (e.g. the Directory module or the Git module) and also tell starship through the format setting where in the prompt the output of that module should be rendered:

format = """
$username\
$hostname\
$directory\
$git_branch\
$git_status\
${custom.kubeselect}\
$line_break\
$status\
$shell\
$character"""

[gcloud]
disabled = true

[custom.kubeselect]
when = "true"
command = "/Users/zerok/bin/kubeselect status"
style = "bold blue"
format = "⛵️ [($output)]($style) "

This is, for instance, my current setup. I’m using pretty much the default configuration with two small changes:

1. I don’t want to have my gcloud configuration show up in the prompt
2. I use kubeselect to manage my kubectl configuration

The second part is also a good example for how you can get custom data into your prompt. You define a custom command and tell starship when it should be considered (in my case always), what command should be executed, and finally how the output should be styled and formatted.

The goal of being cross-platform comes at a small price, though: If you’re on ZSH and used to have part of your prompt being on the right side (using the rprompt variable) you’re out of luck for now. That being said, there exists a draft right now for adding right-side prompts in the future.

But even without rprompt support, I really like starship. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s extensible. At this point I’m pretty close to just installing it per default also on all my servers just so that I get a decent default prompt no matter where I go 😄