I have been using a MacBook Pro as my primary work computer for about 6 months now. As a developer, photographer, and video editor I have have always been partial to them in my personal life. I have been spending more and more time in the Terminal app then ever before. I have never really thought much about customizing my Bash Profile before I was trying to do Docker and Git auto-completion. After seeing a few examples, I started working on my own. If you want to jump straight to download the profile you can do that on GitHub.
Getting Started
Before jumping right into customizing my Bash profile I started doing some research and found that the version of Bash that ships with OS X is not the latest version. The per-installed version is a at least a major release behind. I have been using Homebrew as a package manager for OS X for some time, so when I found out that my Bash shell was behind I went to Homebrew to update it with the command below.
brew install bash
With bash installed as /usr/local/bin/bash, I just needed to change my default shell to use this. I edited /etc/shells with vim and added the shell at the bottom of the list. Finally, I ran the below command to change the default shell.
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash
After closing and reopening Terminal, I could run echo $BASH_VERSION and see 4.4.12(1)-release as the running version of bash.
Editing the Bash Profile
I don’t want this post to turn into a philosophical debate about which editor is the best. I use VSCode but you can use whatever editor you want. The Bash Profile is located in the home directory as: ~/.bash_profile.
Auto Completion
I am lazy, so I love being able to type a few letters and tab through my options when I might not know exactly what I am looking for. For Bash auto-completion, I again have turned to Homebrew to install a package called bash-completion. The following command installs the back-completion package.
brew install bash-completion
It then needs to be added to the ~/.bash_profile. I have added it along with Git, Docker, and Azure CLI completion. This makes the auto-completion second of my profile look like the code below.
# Auto Completion Files
source '/Users/jgardner/lib/azure-cli/az.completion'
source '/usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash'
if [ -f $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion ]; then
. $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion
fi
# -----------------------
Color the Terminal
In doing research on ways to customize the Terminal window I had seen themes but I also found out that it was possible to use colors to decorate items in the Terminal windows to make quickly identifying information easier. As a fan of the Solarized color profile, I found it in a host of theme files in This GitHub repo.
With the Solarized theme installed I wanted to add color context to the terminal. The below code does just that and a bit more. It ads the Git branch into the command line if there is one in the working directory.
parse_git_branch() {
git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ (\1)/'
}
# Color and display of terminal
export PS1="\[\033[36m\]\u\[\033[m\]@\[\033[32m\]\h:\[\033[33;1m\]\W\[\033[m\]\[\033[32m\]\$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\] $ "
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=GxFxCxDxBxegedabagaced
alias ls='ls -GFh'
The rest of the code adds functionality to the terminal that makes things a little bit easier to use. This includes things like changing the default functionality of the cd command to execute my preferred ls command ls -FGlAhp or moving into a newly created directory with the new mcd command.
# -----------------------------
# 2. MAKE TERMINAL BETTER
# -----------------------------
alias gogit='cd ~/Git/' # Goto my Git folder
alias mv='mv -iv' # Preferred 'mv' implementation
alias mkdir='mkdir -pv' # Preferred 'mkdir' implementation
alias ll='ls -FGlAhp' # Preferred 'ls' implementation
alias less='less -FSRXc' # Preferred 'less' implementation
cd() { builtin cd "$@"; ll; } # Always list directory contents upon 'cd'
alias cd..='cd ../' # Go back 1 directory level (for fast typers)
alias ..='cd ../' # Go back 1 directory level
alias ...='cd ../../' # Go back 2 directory levels
alias .3='cd ../../../' # Go back 3 directory levels
alias .4='cd ../../../../' # Go back 4 directory levels
alias .5='cd ../../../../../' # Go back 5 directory levels
alias .6='cd ../../../../../../' # Go back 6 directory levels
alias f='open -a Finder ./' # f: Opens current directory in MacOS Finder
alias ~="cd ~" # ~: Go Home
alias c='clear' # c: Clear terminal display
mcd () { mkdir -p "$1" && cd "$1"; } # mcd: Makes new Dir and jumps inside
# Make Git Better
alias gittree='git log --graph --oneline --all' # Display a tree-like view of Git commits
# extract: Extract most know archives with one command
# ---------------------------------------------------------
extract () {
if [ -f $1 ] ; then
case $1 in
*.tar.bz2) tar xjf $1 ;;
*.tar.gz) tar xzf $1 ;;
*.bz2) bunzip2 $1 ;;
*.rar) unrar e $1 ;;
*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
*.tar) tar xf $1 ;;
*.tbz2) tar xjf $1 ;;
*.tgz) tar xzf $1 ;;
*.zip) unzip $1 ;;
*.Z) uncompress $1 ;;
*.7z) 7z x $1 ;;
*) echo "'$1' cannot be extracted via extract()" ;;
esac
else
echo "'$1' is not a valid file"
fi
}
# ---------------------------
# 4. SEARCHING
# ---------------------------
alias qfind="find . -name " # qfind: Quickly search for file
ff () { /usr/bin/find . -name "$@" ; } # ff: Find file under the current directory
ffs () { /usr/bin/find . -name "$@"'*' ; } # ffs: Find file whose name starts with a given string
ffe () { /usr/bin/find . -name '*'"$@" ; } # ffe: Find file whose name ends with a given string
# spotlight: Search for a file using MacOS Spotlight's metadata
# -----------------------------------------------------------
spotlight () { mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == '$@'wc"; }
# ---------------------------
# 5. PROCESS MANAGEMENT
# ---------------------------
# findPid: find out the pid of a specified process
# -----------------------------------------------------
# Note that the command name can be specified via a regex
# E.g. findPid '/d$/' finds pids of all processes with names ending in 'd'
# Without the 'sudo' it will only find processes of the current user
# -----------------------------------------------------
findPid () { lsof -t -c "$@" ; }
# memHogsTop, memHogsPs: Find memory hogs
# -----------------------------------------------------
alias memHogsTop='top -l 1 -o rsize | head -20'
alias memHogsPs='ps wwaxm -o pid,stat,vsize,rss,time,command | head -10'
# cpuHogs: Find CPU hogs
# -----------------------------------------------------
alias cpu_hogs='ps wwaxr -o pid,stat,%cpu,time,command | head -10'
# topForever: Continual 'top' listing (every 10 seconds)
# -----------------------------------------------------
alias topForever='top -l 9999999 -s 10 -o cpu'
# ttop: Recommended 'top' invocation to minimize resources
# ------------------------------------------------------------
# Taken from this macosxhints article
# http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060816123853639
# ------------------------------------------------------------
alias ttop="top -R -F -s 10 -o rsize"
# my_ps: List processes owned by my user:
# ------------------------------------------------------------
my_ps() { ps $@ -u $USER -o pid,%cpu,%mem,start,time,bsdtime,command ; }
# ---------------------------
# 6. NETWORKING
# ---------------------------
alias myip='dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com' # myip: Public facing IP Address
alias netCons='lsof -i' # netCons: Show all open TCP/IP sockets
alias flushDNS='dscacheutil -flushcache' # flushDNS: Flush out the DNS Cache
alias lsock='sudo /usr/sbin/lsof -i -P' # lsock: Display open sockets
alias lsockU='sudo /usr/sbin/lsof -nP | grep UDP' # lsockU: Display only open UDP sockets
alias lsockT='sudo /usr/sbin/lsof -nP | grep TCP' # lsockT: Display only open TCP sockets
alias ipInfo0='ipconfig getpacket en0' # ipInfo0: Get info on connections for en0
alias ipInfo1='ipconfig getpacket en1' # ipInfo1: Get info on connections for en1
alias openPorts='sudo lsof -i | grep LISTEN' # openPorts: All listening connections
alias showBlocked='sudo ipfw list' # showBlocked: All ipfw rules inc/ blocked IPs
# ii: display useful host related informaton
# -------------------------------------------------------------------
ii() {
echo -e "\nYou are logged on ${RED}$HOST"
echo -e "\nAdditionnal information:$NC " ; uname -a
echo -e "\n${RED}Users logged on:$NC " ; w -h
echo -e "\n${RED}Current date :$NC " ; date
echo -e "\n${RED}Machine stats :$NC " ; uptime
echo -e "\n${RED}Current network location :$NC " ; scselect
echo -e "\n${RED}Public facing IP Address :$NC " ;myip
#echo -e "\n${RED}DNS Configuration:$NC " ; scutil --dns
echo
}
Do you have a custom Bash profile? I would love to see some of the things that you find useful in the comments below. If you find this content useful, be sure to follow me on Twitter or follow my RSS feed.