Overview

I’ve been using Oh My Bash (OMB) for a few months after being introduced to it during a brief project last year. The themes, aliases and customisation are nice but I have found some slighly flaky TTY behaviour with some, if not all, themes.

In the interim, I stumbled across Liquid Prompt (LP), a similar project, but with a slightly narrower focus.

OMB covers prompt themes, plugins, completions & aliases. LP focuses purely on the prompt, creating a dynamic prompt experience that reflects where you are and what you’re doing (a little) more finely.

Example

For example, I have a few different AWS CLI profiles mapped to different accounts and/or roles, and a few simple aliases to toggle the currently configured profile.

With LP enabled, the shell prompt dynamically reflects the current AWS_PROFILE, helping to indicate where I am and what I’m doing.

  1. Check the current AWS_PROFILE environment variable value: 
     [wmcdonald:~] $ echo $AWS_PROFILE
  2. Review the simple AWS_PROFILE aliases set: 
     [wmcdonald:~] $ alias | grep awsprofile
 alias awsprofile.home.administrator='export AWS_PROFILE=awsprofile.home.administrator'
 alias awsprofile.home.poweruser='export AWS_PROFILE=awsprofile.home.poweruser'
  3. Switch to the poweruser role, note the prompt updates automatically: 
     [wmcdonald:~] $ awsprofile.home.poweruser 
 [wmcdonald:~] (awsprofile.home.poweruser) $ echo $AWS_PROFILE
  4. Check the value in AWS_PROFILE: 
     [wmcdonald:~] (awsprofile.home.poweruser) $ echo $AWS_PROFILE
 awsprofile.home.poweruser
  5. Switch to another AWS profile, again note the dynamic change: 
     [wmcdonald:~] (awsprofile.home.poweruser) $ awsprofile.home.administrator 
 [wmcdonald:~] (awsprofile.home.administrator) $ echo $AWS_PROFILE
 awsprofile.home.administrator
  6. Finally, unset the profile and again, observe the dynamic change: 
     [wmcdonald:~] (awsprofile.home.administrator) $ unset AWS_PROFILE 
 [wmcdonald:~] $ echo $AWS_PROFILE

 [wmcdonald:~] $

References

TODO