Fish shell is an alternative shell for linux, which comes with better content assist, a history of commands and many additional features contributed via plugins.
The official fish shell website can be found here: https://fishshell.com/
Install fish
Run the following commands to install the Fishshell on Ubuntu.
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fish-shell/release-3
sudo apt update
sudo apt install fish
For further details also see https://launchpad.net/~fish-shell/+archive/ubuntu/release-3
NOTE: In case you just sudo apt install fish without adding the repository mentioned above you might install an older version of the Fish shell.
Setting fish as default shell
You can easily run the fish shell within your regular terminal by running fish in your bash/terminal.
In case you'd want to have fish as default shell so that it opens right away when opening a terminal or hitting CTRL + ALT + T then this command will help:
chsh -s $(which fish)
Remove fish welcome message
The fish shell usually welcomes you with the following message:
Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell
Type help for instructions on how to use fish
This is quite nice, but not too helpful.
In order to remove this you can open the config.fish file by using nano like this:
nano ~/.config/fish/config.fish
Inside the config.fish file just add a new line with set fish_greeting as contents, which will basically remove the original welcome message.
Setting persistent env variables
A universal variable is a variable whose value is shared across all instances of fish, now and in the future – even after a reboot. You can make a variable universal with set -U
In case you want to set a different editor for kubectl edits use the following command:
set -Ux KUBE_EDITOR "code --wait"
Also see https://fishshell.com/docs/current/tutorial.html#universal-variables
Plugins for fish
The easiest way to install plugins for fish, is to use fisher.
Fisher can be installed by running:
curl -sL https://git.io/fisher | source && fisher install jorgebucaran/fisher
The nvm Plugin
In order to use nvm (Node Version Manager) in the Fishshell you should use the following plugin:
fisher install FabioAntunes/fish-nvm edc/bass
With this plugin in place you can simply run nvm install --lts within the Fishshell to install the latest long term support version of node and npm.
Tide Plugin
In order to improve the look of the shell I'd recommend the Tide plugin.
fisher install IlanCosman/tide@v5
After the installation you're usually promted to setup tide accoding to your needs, but you can always run tide configure to reconfigure the standard Tide setup.
The general features of Tide can be found here: https://github.com/IlanCosman/tide#features
How to extend the configuration of Tide can be found here: https://github.com/IlanCosman/tide/wiki/Configuration
Adjusting the config of Tide
The defaults are already really fine, but I'd rather have the git information on the right hand side of the prompt.
So I listed what's configured for the left prompt by running echo $tide_left_prompt_items, which showed this:
vi_mode pwd git
In order to remove git from the left hand side I ran set --universal tide_left_prompt_items vi_mode pwd which basically has overridden the default.
In order to add git to the right prompt I ran:
set --universal tide_right_prompt_items git $tide_right_prompt_items
With these settings being applied my shell looks like this:
In case you're wondering what the ?1 behind the branch name means you'll find an explanation here: https://github.com/IlanCosman/tide/wiki/What-do-the-git-icons-mean%3F