README

                                    vimps1

                        Bash Loadable Builtin for PS1
                                     with
               Multi-color and Vim-like directory abbreviation


vimps1 produces a prompt text with ANSI escape code colors and directory 
abbreviation, which looks like the abbreviated directory names in Vim tabs. It 
also has exit status indicator line.  A prompt may look like:

   ~/.loc/share $

Where ".loc" is the abbreviation of ~/.local, when a directory name has more 
than four column width (=4 characters), it is truncated to just four 
characters.  All directories in $PWD, except the last one.

You can view a screenshot [1] of some examples.

[1] http://imgur.com/uQBlfUl


                                    PROMPT


All styles, colors and user role characters are hard-coded.  The colors are:

GREEN   : directory name is in green
GREEN   : normal user ($)
WHITE   : if abbreviated,
RED     : directory separators (/)
RED     : root user (#)
MAGENTA : /home/$USER (~)

There is always a space prefixed for readability.


                                 EXIT STATUS


vimps1 does not know the exit status of previous execution, the exit status is 
carried over as first argument, in other words, vimps1 simply displays the 
first argument in its exit status indicator.

It is a red line with white centered text, right above the prompt, only shown 
when $? > 0, it may looks like:

  | ~ $ wrong command            |
  |bash: wrong: command not found|
  |             127              |
  | ~ $                          |


                                 DEPENDENCIES


- Bash
- Bash headers



                                   BUILDING


On Gentoo, those header files can be installed with USE=plugins of 
app-shells/bash, and they can be found at /usr/include/bash-plugins.  You 
should able to build the loadable just by running make.

On other systems, if you don't know how to get them installed via package 
manager, you may download Bash's source tarball of the same version and point 
BASH_INCDIR to the top level of extracted tarball (where to locate builtins.h) 
as the following:

  make BASH_INCDIR=/path/to/bash-MAJOR.MINOR[.PATCH]


                                 INSTALLATION


There is no make install since there is no easy way to load a loadable, Bash's 
enable builtin has no search path.  However, you can put the vimps1 loadable 
to one of $PATH, and you can load it as shown below from bashrc:

  enable -f "$(which vimps1)" vimps1
  PS1='$(vimps1 $?)'

You can also test it, for example:

  $ echo "$(PWD=/path/to/testing vimps1 123)"


                                   HISTORY


vimps1 was originally written in Bash [1], inspired by Vim's directory 
abbreviation style.  It was hosted on Google Code with a collection of other 
codes.  However, its performance is very poor, therefore rewritten in C as 
Bash loadable builtin [2] for better performance.

[1] https://github.com/livibetter-backup/yjl/blob/5787686/dotfiles/bashrc#L45
[2] https://github.com/livibetter-backup/yjl/commits/6870d9e/dotfiles/vimps1.c

In 2011, the dotfiles were split and moved to its own repository, vimps1 was 
moved along with the files [1].  vimps1 was licensed under GPL when vcprompt 
was incorporated into vimps1's source, because chunks of GPL'd codes were 
copied.  Later, vcprompt was removed from vimps1, but license was kept.

[1] https://github.com/livibetter/dotfiles/commits/86f524a/bin/vimps1.c

In early 2017, vimps1 has its own repository [1], the commit history was not 
extracted, since the entire code was nearly rewritten and significantly 
simplified, but the support for wide characters was added, and the license has 
been changed to MIT License.

[1] https://github.com/livibetter/vimps1


                                  COPYRIGHT


vimps1 is licensed under the MIT License.