I have recently purchased a Mac in order to create some IOS apps. This is the first time I have used Apple products outside of basic use in school many years ago. I have started installing various development tools that are available to get me going. One thing that I found was missing was my beloved Posh-git. Posh-git is a great powershell extension on Windows that makes seeing what is happening in git much easier. I want that same functionality on the Mac.
What is Posh Git
Posh Git is an amazing PowerShell module that integrates Git status information into the prompt within powershell. Posh git also provides tab completion for git commands within Powershell too.
Here is a sample view of what it adds to the prompt:
You can read all about Posh git and how to use it on the Github repository here. Have a read through of the README to understand what each of the numbers mean and colours and symbols represent.
Having this information available so quickly and easily will speed up your Git commands by quite a bit.
Getting it working on Mac
To get this working on Mac, we have a couple of options:
- We can install PowerShell on Mac
- We can try and replicate the same functionality in bash.
While I think it is great that you can now install PowerShell on more operating systems than just Windows, I really want to get the authentic Mac experience when trying to use a Mac for development. So if I can avoid it, I would rather not install PowerShell on the Mac, as it feels like it is cheating and just making the Mac more like Windows.
So I decided to try to get it to work with bash, and I found that it was easier to get working than I expected.
It turns out that someone has ported the posh-git repo for PowerShell into Bash: Posh-git for Bash.
Following the instructions on the README, I had it up and going really quickly.
Install bash-completion
The first step I took, was to install git bash-completion. In order to do this; I had to install Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager for Mac.
To install Homebrew, simply run the following command in a terminal
1 | /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" |
You will get asked to confirm, and once you do; Homebrew will be installed.
Once you have Homebrew installed you can install bash-completion.
Run the following command to install bash-completion:
1 | brew install git bash-completion |
If you already have git installed, you just need to run:
1 | brew install bash-completion |
When that has finished, you also need to add the following line to your ~/.bash_profile
1 | [ -f /usr/local/etc/bash_completion ] && . /usr/local/etc/bash_completion |
Install posh-git-sh
To install posh-git-sh, first browse to the github repo here. Find the file git-prompt.sh in the repository and copy that file somewhere local - ~/git-prompt.sh for example
Then reference that file in your ~/.bashrc with the following line:
1 | source ~/git-prompt.sh |
If you don’t already have your ~/.bashrc referenced in your ~/.bash_profile add the following line to your ~/.bash_profile:
1 | source ~/.bashrc |
Now when you navigate to a folder that has a git repository you should see the posh-git extension to the prompt:
Also, if you are using visual studio code and use bash as your integrated terminal, you should see the same result in the integrated termninal window:
Give posh-git a try if you haven’t used it before, I am sure you will find it useful!