Well, WSL it's a good way to have a Unixish environment on Windows, but sadly his performance and memory consumption leads me to find another alternative... and I found it in a place closer than I expected.
1. Bash
The first step is to download and install git with bash terminal support.
2. ZSH
At least Bash is better than the windows CMD, but ZSH is in another league with his productivity boosts. So we are going to install ZSH over Bash.
Download ZSH
Download the latest MSYS2 zsh package from the MSYS2 package repository. The file will be named something along the lines of zsh-#.#-#-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
zstfiles can be decompressed with PeaZip
Install
Extract the contents of the archive (which should include etc and usr folders) into your Git Bash installation directory. This is likely to be under C:\Program Files\Git. Merge the contents of the folder if asked (no files should be getting overridden).
Setup
Open the Git Bash terminal and run zsh command, then verify the installed version.
zsh --version
zsh 5.9 (x86_64-pc-msys)
Configure zsh as the default shell by appending the following to your ~/.bashrc file:
if [ -t 1 ]; then
exec zsh
fi
Windows can mangle some UTF-8 encoded text, causing unexpected characters to be displayed in your terminal. To fix this, add the following to your
~/.bashrcfile, ideally, before the code that sets your shell as zsh:
/c/Windows/System32/chcp.com 65001 > /dev/null 2>&1
Close and reopen the terminal, to update those changes. The first time will ask for some files creation, choose:
Quit and do nothing. The function will be run again next time.
3. Oh my zsh!
Install
Add superpowers to zsh installing Oh my zsh! running this command.
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
Fonts
Download and install manually the Meslo Nerd Fonts to include all glyphs and symbols that Powerlevel10k may need
Theme
There are a lot of themes but my favorite is Powerlevel10k because is easy to set up and use.
git clone https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k
On the ~/.zshrc file add this additional configuration
ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"
POWERLEVEL9K_RIGHT_PROMPT_ELEMENTS=(history)
POWERLEVEL9K_SHORTEN_DIR_LENGTH=1
# User configuration
export LS_COLORS="rs=0:no=00:mi=00:mh=00:ln=01;36:or=01;31:di=01;34:ow=04;01;34:st=34:tw=04;34:pi=01;33:so=01;33:do=01;33:bd=01;33:cd=01;33:su=01;35:sg=01;35:ca=01;35:ex=01;32:"
Restart the terminal and type p10k configure.
⚠ if you can't see the icon symbols and always show an ▯, cancel the process, and refer to step 4 before continue.
Plugins
Oh My zsh! have a lot of plugins to use. It's recommended to explore the options and use what is good for your needs.
I've already installed a lot related to software development and other ones to add more functionalities. Running these commands:
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
git clone https://github.com/Pilaton/OhMyZsh-full-autoupdate.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/ohmyzsh-full-autoupdate
And now edit the ~/.zshrc file and add it inside the plugins property (don't use commas as separators)
plugins=(
adb
command-not-found
extract
deno
docker
git
github
gitignore
history-substring-search
node
npm
nvm
yarn
volta
vscode
sudo
web-search
z
zsh-autosuggestions
zsh-syntax-highlighting
ohmyzsh-full-autoupdate
)
# User configuration
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_HIGHLIGHTERS=(main brackets pattern cursor root line)
ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_PATTERNS=('rm -rf *' 'fg=white,bold,bg=red')
If you are using NVM take care of following this configuration to avoid slowing the zsh start-up and this configuration to speed up the compinit
⚠ If you have done previous package configurations, alias definitions, or something else on your ~/.basrc previous ZSH installation you need to move those manually to ~/.zshrc.
4. Terminals
To use the same terminal inside VSCode and Windows Terminal follow these configurations.
VS Code
Add these properties to the user setttings.json
{
...
+ "terminal.integrated.fontFamily": "MesloLGS NF",
+ "terminal.integrated.fontSize": 12,
+ "terminal.integrated.shellIntegration.enabled": true,
+ "terminal.integrated.defaultProfile.windows": "Git Bash",
...
}
Microsoft Terminal
Add these configurations on the Git Bash terminal.
{
"profiles": {
"defaults": {},
"list": [
{
+ "font": {
+ "face": "MesloLGS NF",
+ "size": 12
+ },
"guid": "{2ece5bfe-50ed-5f3a-ab87-5cd4baafed2b}",
"hidden": false,
"name": "Git Bash",
"source": "Git",
+ "startingDirectory": "D:\\Developer"
},
]
}
}
Downsides
- Git Bash is an emulation layer, so It's not as fast as I expected, but much faster than WSL (and also not dealing with his memory and performance issues)
- Take some time to load the first time (but, less than WSL).
- Volta on Windows requires additional permissions, maybe you gonna need to come back to NVM
- Strange behavior while writing inside VS Code terminal
- Can't use paths saved on
%VARIABLE%, you are going to need to translate it withcygpath $LOCALAPPDATA. To change to a path use something like this$(cygpath $LOCALAPPDATA)/Volta/tools/image/node/
If Git Bash is not what you expect, you can also come back to WSL and use ZSH + Oh My ZSH!
Sources
That’s All Folks!
Happy Coding 🖖
Top comments (9)
Great tutorial, thank you so much.
This is what I call a useful and well-documented Tutorial. Many thanks for this, awesome guide!
or alternative ohmyposh.dev/docs/installation/win...
Great alternative, but if you want to work with PowerShell instead of ZSH
Thanks you very much <3
I just did a fresh install of win11 24H2 to a new drive. Another gotcha that I ran into for windows terminal.. MAKE SURE THIS IS OFF for all profiles/default where you plan to use before running p10k configure..
what step 4 you refer to when icon don't appear?
dev.to/equiman/zsh-on-windows-with...
thank you really appreciated❤️