Bash-it – Bash Framework to Control Your Scripts and Aliases

Bash-it is a bundle of community Bash commands and scripts for Bash 3.2+, which comes with autocompletion, themes, aliases, custom functions, and more. It offers a useful framework for developing, maintaining and using shell scripts and custom commands for your daily work.

If you are using the Bash shell on a daily basis and looking for an easy way to keep track of all your scripts, aliases and functions, then Bash-it is for you! Stop polluting your ~/bin directory and .bashrc file, fork/clone Bash-it and begin hacking away.

How to Install Bash-it in Linux

To install Bash-it, first you need to clone the following repository to a location of your choice, for example:

$ git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it.git ~/.bash_it

Then run the following command to install Bash-it (it automatically backup your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc, depending on your OS). You will be asked “Would you like to keep your .bashrc and append bash-it templates at the end? [y/N]”, answer according to your preference.

$ ~/.bash_it/install.sh 

After installation, you can use ls command to verify the bash-it installation files and directories as shown.

$ ls .bash_it/

To start using Bash-it, open a new tab or run:

$ source $HOME/.bashrc

How to Customize Bash-it in Linux

To customize Bash-it, you need to edit your modified ~/.bashrc shell startup file. To list all installed and available aliases, completions, and plugins run the following commands, which should also shows you how to enable or disable them:

  
$ bash-it show aliases        	
$ bash-it show completions  
$ bash-it show plugins        	

Next, we will demonstrate how to enable aliases, but before that, first list the current aliases with the following command.

$ alias 

All the aliases are located in the $HOME/.bash_it/aliases/ directory. Now let’s enable the apt aliases as shown.

$ bash-it enable alias apt

Then reload bash-it configs and check the current aliases once more.

$ bash-it reload	
$ alias

From the output of the alias command, the apt aliases are now enabled.

You can disable newly enabled alias with the following commands.

$ bash-it disable alias apt
$ bash-it reload

In the next section, we will use similar steps to enable or disable completions ($HOME/.bash_it/completion/) and plugins ($HOME/..bash_it/plugins/). All enabled features are located in the $HOME/.bash_it/enabled directory.

How to Manage Bash-it Theme

The default theme for bash-it is bobby; you can check this using the BASH_IT_THEME env variable as shown.

echo $BASH_IT_THEME

You can find over 50+ Bash-it themes in the $BASH_IT/themes directory.

$ ls $BASH_IT/themes

To preview all the themes in your shell before using any, run the following command.

$ BASH_PREVIEW=true bash-it reload

Once you have identified a theme to use, open your .bashrc file and find the following line in it and change it value to the name of the theme you want, for example:

$ export BASH_IT_THEME='essential'

Save the file and close, and source it as shown before.

$ source $HOME/.bashrc

Note: In case you have built a your own custom themes outside of $BASH_IT/themes directory, point the BASH_IT_THEME variable directly to the theme file:

export BASH_IT_THEME='/path/to/your/custom/theme/'

And to disable theming, leave the above env variable empty.

export BASH_IT_THEME=''

How to Search Plugins, Aliases or Completions

You can easily check out which of the plugins, aliases or completions are available for a specific programming language, framework or an environment.

The trick is simple: just search for multiple terms related to some of the commands you use frequently, for example:

$ bash-it search python pip pip3 pipenv
$ bash-it search git

To view help messages for the aliases, completions and plugins, run:

$ bash-it help aliases        	
$ bash-it help completions
$ bash-it help plugins     

You can create you own custom scripts, and aliases, in the following files in the respective directories:

aliases/custom.aliases.bash 
completion/custom.completion.bash 
lib/custom.bash 
plugins/custom.plugins.bash 
custom/themes//<custom theme name>.theme.bash 

Updating and Uninstalling Bash-It

To update Bash-it to the latest version, simply run:

$ bash-it update

If you don’t like Bash-it anymore, you can uninstall it by running the following commands.

$ cd $BASH_IT
$ ./uninstall.sh

The uninstall.sh script will restore your previous Bash startup file. Once it has completed the operation, you need to remove the Bash-it directory from your machine by running.

$ rm -rf $BASH_IT  

And remember to start a new shell for the recent changes to work or source it again as shown.

$ source $HOME/.bashrc

You can see all usage options by running:

$ bash-it help

Finally, Bash-it comes with a number of cool features related to Git.

For more information, see the Bash-it Github repository: https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it.

That’s all! Bash-it is an easy and productive way to keep all your bash scripts and aliases under control. If you have any questions to ask, use the feedback form below.