A while back, I wrote about the fish shell and a plugin manager named fisherman. Today, a colleague asked me: “how do I get your awesome prompt?” And I realised I hadn’t explained at all how to use either - luckily, it’s fairly easy.
So here’s a guide.
Step 1: Install fish
See the fish shell for up-to-date instructions.
Ubuntu, if you want updates via apt (you do):
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fish-shell/release-2
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install fish
Mac OS X, if you have homebrew (you should):
brew install fish
Step 2: Make sure fish is registered with the system
Optional, required if you want to use fish as the default shell on your system.
This usually is done by package managers such as apt, but sometimes not. So better check /etc/shells that it includes the full path to fish. The full path is usually something like /usr/bin/fish or /usr/local/bin/fish, you can find out via which fish.
Step 3: Change the default shell to fish
Optional, requires step 2. Make sure you did step 2. Now.
chsh -s /usr/bin/fish
Step 4: Install fisherman
curl -sL get.fisherman.sh | fish
Step 5: Install powerline and powerline fonts
This is required for the cool themes with glyphs and arrows and stuff.
sudo pip install powerline
For the fonts, see patched fonts on github.
Step 6: Install a fish theme
I recommend shellder, although I have made my own theme loosely based on shellder and bob-the-fish.
fisher install simnalamburt/shellder
# fisher install tobywf/fish-ps
Step 7: Tweak the fish colour scheme
fish_config
Fin
And that’s it! To be honest, installing the fonts is probably the most hassle. But totally worth it.