%title: Improve Your Shell Game %author: Gregor MacDougall %date: 2022-01-19

Tools to up your command line game

Covered in this presentation

• Fuzzy finding
• Aliases
• Tools to improve your development experience

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Who am I?

Gregor MacDougall Engineer @ Gusto

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Unix Philosophy

• Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
• Write programs to work together.
• Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

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tmux

https://github.com/tmux/tmux

A terminal multiplexer

It allows you to run multiple shells, and multiple shell sessions within a single terminal.

If you're watching my presentation, it's the green bar at the bottom (and so much more).

Usage:

  <Ctrl>+b n
  <Ctrl>+b (pane_number)
  <Ctrl>+b s

Plus lots more...

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ripgrep

https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep

Find file or stdin content. Replacement for command line grep.

Features:

• Uses Rust's regex engine, which is fast.
• Respects gitignore to avoid useless searches

Usage:

  # Instead of
  grep -ril commandbar *
  git grep -il 'command.*bar'

  # Use
  rg -il 'commandbar.*bar'

  # Additional features, type filtering
  rg -il --type ts 'commandbar.*bar'
  rg -il --type ruby 'commandbar.*bar'

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fzf

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

Command line fuzzy finder

Usage:

  fzf
  vim $(fzf)
  yarn jest $(git ls-files | rg '(spec|test)\.[jt]sx?' | fzf)

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bat

https://github.com/sharkdp/bat

Output files with syntax highlighting

  # Instead of
  cat Gemfile

  # Use
  bat Gemfile

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Integration (Part 1)

fzf + bat (for previews)

  fzf --preview 'bat --color=always --style=numbers {}'

fzf + ripgrep + bat (for live code searching) https://github.com/junegunn/fzf/blob/master/ADVANCED.md#using-fzf-as-interative-ripgrep-launcher

  rfv

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fd

https://github.com/sharkdp/fd

A replacement for find.

Usage:

  fd
  fd use_command_bar
  fd use_command_bar -e ts

Integrate into fzf:

  export FZF_DEFAULT_COMMAND="fd --type file --color=always"

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Starship Prompt

https://starship.rs/

Cross-shell, cross-platform prompt helper

I don't use this prompt, but I recommend it. It's probably better than your prompt.

Usage (with zsh):

  eval "$(starship init zsh)"

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direnv

https://direnv.net/

Per directory environment variable management

.envrc

  export PORT=7190
  export CONFIG__DATABASE__PASSWORD='my_postgres_password'

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tmuxp

https://github.com/tmux-python/tmuxp

Create pre-configured tmux sessions

  session_name: g-sup
  start_directory: ~/dev/gusto-support
  windows:
    - window_name: code
      panes:
      -
    - window_name: rails s
      panes:
      - shell_command: rs
    - window_name: rails c
      panes:
      - shell_command: rc
    - window_name: webpack
      panes:
      - shell_command: bin/webpack-dev-server
    - window_name: test
      panes:
      -

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GitHub CLI

https://cli.github.com/

Command Line Interface for GitHub

Usage:

  gh pr list
  gh pr checkout 123
  gh pr create

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Integration (Part 2)

GitHub CLI + fzf

  gh pr checkout $(gh pr list -S 'review-requested:@me' | cat | column -t -s $'\t' | fzf | cut -d' ' -f1)

Fuzzy checkout recent branches

  git checkout $(git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads \
    --format='%(refname:short)!%(committerdate:relative)!%(subject)' | column -ts'!' | fzf | cut -d' ' -f1)

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Other Stuff I Use

I recommend you try the other things I listed above.

If you want to know what else I use, but carries a significant workflow change or has a steep learning curve, you can also check out:

• Arch Linux
• Neovim
  • Lots of plugins
• Docker + Docker Compose
• Fish Shell
  • Tide Prompt
  • fzf.fish

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Where do I start

https://github.com/gmacdougall/shell-game

https://github.com/gmacdougall/dotfiles