Overview

Set up the fish shell + some additional goodies on Ubuntu. Take a look at the asciicast below for some highlights!

Installation

If you're on a reasonably recent Ubuntu system and just want to install and set up everything automatically, run:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dlukes/go-fish/master/gofi.sh |
  sh

Of course, feel free to take a look at the script first to see what it does.

Force re-installing all packages by setting the GOFISH_FORCE environment variable:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dlukes/go-fish/master/gofi.sh |
  GOFISH_FORCE=1 sh

By default, configuration files are installed only for the current user under ~/.config/fish, but they can be set up system-wide by setting the environment variable GOFISH_CONF_DIR=/etc/fish.

Alternatively, you can clone this repo as ~/.config/fish, which will give you just the configuration files, and install all or some of the software by hand (or maybe it has already been installed by your system administrator). Here's a list of what's included, with links:

• the fish shell itself
• fasd, a frecency sorter for your command line history
• fzf, a command-line fuzzy-finder
• exa, a modern replacement for ls with git integration, tree views and more
• rg and fd as modern replacements for grep and find which are faster and have better defaults (e.g. they're VCS-aware)
• bat as a modern replacement for cat/less with pretty colors, git integration and wings

Features and usage

These are just highlights of what this particular config adds on top of fish; to see the great features fish provides by default, check out https://fishshell.com/.

• exa replaces ls and the following shortcuts are predefined: ll (long listing), la (same but including hidden files), lt (long listing with tree view), lat (same but including hidden files)
• a j function (as in jump) is provided to quickly navigate "frecently" visited directories using fasd: just type j <Tab> or j foo<Tab> and completions should pop up based on your history
• the fzf fuzzy-finder is installed and its default keyboard shortcuts are loaded:
  • <Ctrl+R> uses fzf to search your command line history
  • <Alt+C> allows to quickly find directories in the subtree under $PWD or a path you've started typing on the command line and cd into them
  • <Ctrl+T> interactively selects one or more files in the subtree under $PWD whose paths should be added to the command line -- try e.g. vim <Ctrl+T> or nano <Ctrl+T> to select files to edit with vim/nano
  • entries in the selection list are navigated with <Ctrl+N/P>
  • where it makes sense, multiple ones can be de/selected with <Shift+Tab>/<Tab>
  • the preview window can be scrolled either using the mouse wheel or the appropriate gesture on the touchpad
  • the basic search syntax is intuitive but it has some advanced features which are documented here
• <Ctrl+X> interactively expands globs in the word under cursor
• informative prompts showing Python virtualenv if active, exit status of last command if abnormal (if it was a pipeline, then a status for each command), timing info for long-running commands, and git repo state
• SSH keys configured in conf.d/go.fish are pre-loaded upon first login using ssh-agent, so that you don't have to repeatedly enter passphrases when they are used
• ... and some more stuff, see conf.d/go.fish and functions/*

Troubleshooting Unicode glyphs in prompt

The default prompt uses Unicode characters which don't exist in Ubuntu Mono and get substituted by a sans-serif font by default because of improper configuration. This looks ugly, so the installation script tries to add fontconfig overrides for Ubuntu Mono which address this.

However, maybe you're not using Ubuntu Mono, or maybe you're installing this on a server which you'll be accessing from your local machine. In these cases, you'll probably want to tweak this manually, i.e. modify/add a file under /etc/fonts/conf.d/00-overrides.conf with contents along the following lines:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>Ubuntu Mono</family>
    <default>
      <family>monospace</family>
    </default>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

Edit "Ubuntu Mono" to match the font you're using as needed.

You may need to run fc-cache -fv to update your fontconfig cache and/or open a new terminal window for these changes to take effect.

NOTE: If your local machine runs macOS or Windows, you don't need this.

Alternatively, you can of course always just get rid of these characters by customizing functions/fish_prompt.fish, especially if you don't like them :)