How to configure your command line to see useful git information in the prompt? And add colors, drush auto-completion and shortcuts too!

Every developer configures ones machine in a manner that assists them in the development workflow, and loves to learn and share new and better ways to do things.

This blog is to share with some of the new members of Innoraft’s team, and anybody who lands here, bash configurations that help you customize your command line prompt in useful ways. In here you will find answers to the below questions.

• How to add color to your command prompt?
• How to see useful git information, like the current branch you are on and the status of your repository, on the command line?
• How you setup and use drush shortcuts for drupal development?

Though these are really simple configurations they can add a lot of value to your development workflow, as shown in the video below. What I love most about these configurations is how they empower (almost nudge) you to use git branching and other features to the most.

Here is a screencast I put together to show you how it works.

A sample bash configuration file with the necessary configurations can be seen here - https://gist.github.com/sumeetpareek/9907382

You can learn more about each configuration change below

• Setting up a colored bash prompt
• Adding git branch name and status information to your command prompt
• Setting up drush auto-completion and shortcuts after installing drush command line utility for drupal

Go ahead and try them. I am sure you would love the ease of drupal development with such a setup. Do share awesome tricks you have to make you command line more useful :-)