Table of contents:
- Overview
- Versions
- Installation
- Using posh-git
- Git status summary information
- Customization variables
- Customizing the posh-git prompt
- Based on work by
posh-git is a PowerShell module that integrates Git and PowerShell by providing Git status summary information that can be displayed in the PowerShell prompt, e.g.:
posh-git also provides tab completion support for common git commands, branch names, paths and more.
For example, with posh-git, PowerShell can tab complete git commands like checkout
by typing git ch
and pressing the tab key.
That will tab complete to git checkout
and if you keep pressing tab, it will cycle through other command matches such as cherry
and cherry-pick
.
You can also tab complete remote names and branch names e.g.: git pull or<tab> ma<tab>
tab completes to git pull origin master
.
Windows (AppVeyor) | Linux/macOS (Travis) | Code Coverage Status |
---|---|---|
- Supports Windows PowerShell 5.x
- Supports PowerShell Core 6+ on all platforms
- Supports ANSI escape sequences for color customization
- Includes breaking changes from v0.x (roadmap)
Windows (AppVeyor) | Code Coverage Status |
---|---|
- Supports Windows PowerShell 3+
- Does not support PowerShell Core
- Avoids breaking changes, maintaining v0.x
These installation instructions, as well as rest of this readme, applies only to version 1.x of posh-git. For v0.x installation instructions see this README.
Before installing posh-git make sure the following prerequisites have been met.
-
Windows PowerShell 5.x or PowerShell Core 6.0. You can get PowerShell Core 6.0 for Windows, Linux or macOS from here. Check your PowerShell version by executing
$PSVersionTable.PSVersion
. -
On Windows, script execution policy must be set to either
RemoteSigned
orUnrestricted
. Check the script execution policy setting by executingGet-ExecutionPolicy
. If the policy is not set to one of the two required values, run PowerShell as Administrator and executeSet-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser -Confirm
. -
Git must be installed and available via the PATH environment variable. Check that
git
is accessible from PowerShell by executinggit --version
from PowerShell. Ifgit
is not recognized as the name of a command, verify that you have Git installed. If not, install Git from https://git-scm.com. If you have Git installed, make sure the path to git is in your PATH environment variable.
posh-git is available on the PowerShell Gallery and can be installed using the PowerShellGet module.
-
Start either Windows PowerShell 5.x or PowerShell Core 6.x (
pwsh
). -
Execute one of the following two commands from an elevated PowerShell prompt, depending on whether (A) you've never installed posh-git, or (B) you've already installed a previous version:
# (A) You've never installed posh-git from the PowerShell Gallery # # NOTE: If asked to trust packages from the PowerShell Gallery, answer yes to continue installation of posh-git # NOTE: If the AllowPrerelease parameter is not recognized, update your version of PowerShellGet to >= 1.6 e.g. # Install-Module PowerShellGet -Scope CurrentUser -Force -AllowClobber PowerShellGet\Install-Module posh-git -Scope CurrentUser -AllowPrerelease -Force
OR
# (B) You've already installed a previous version of posh-git from the PowerShell Gallery PowerShellGet\Update-Module posh-git
The version of PSReadLine
(1.2) that ships with PowerShell Core 6.0 has known issues that cause problems with the
prompt function that posh-git uses. Fortunately, there is a beta of PSReadLine 2.0.0 that fixes these problems.
You can check the version of PSReadLine you have by executing: Get-Module PSReadLine
.
If it less than 2.0.0, follow this procedure.
-
Install the prerelease version of PSReadLine - 2.0.0-beta* by executing:
Install-Module PSReadLine -Scope CurrentUser -AllowClobber -AllowPrerelease -Force
-
Restart
pwsh
and verify you have at least the2.0.0
version of PSReadLine by executing:Get-Module PSReadLine
.
If you prefer to manage posh-git as a Windows package, you can use Chocolatey to install posh-git. If you don't have Chocolatey, you can install it from the Chocolately Install page. With Chocolatey installed, execute the following command to install posh-git:
choco install poshgit
After you have installed posh-git, you need to configure your PowerShell session to use the posh-git module.
The first step is to import the module into your PowerShell session which will enable git tab completion.
You can do this with the command Import-Module posh-git
.
You do not want to have to manually execute the Import-Module
command every time you open a new PowerShell prompt.
Let's have PowerShell import this module for you in each new PowerShell session.
We can do this by either executing the command Add-PoshGitToProfile
or by editing your PowerShell profile script and
adding the command Import-Module posh-git
.
If you want posh-git to be available in all your PowerShell hosts (console, ISE, etc) then execute Add-PoshGitToProfile -AllHosts
.
This will add a line containing Import-Module posh-git
to the file $profile.CurrentUserAllHosts
.
If you want posh-git to be available in just the current host, then execute Add-PoshGitToProfile
.
This will add the same command but to the file $profile.CurrentUserCurrentHost
.
If you want posh-git to be available for all users on the system, start PowerShell as Administrator or
via sudo (sudo pwsh
) on Linux/macOS then execute Add-PoshGitToProfile -AllUsers -AllHosts
.
This will add the import command to $profile.AllUsersAllHosts
.
If you want to configure posh-git for all users but only for the current host,
drop the -AllHosts
parameter and the command will modify $profile.AllUsersCurrentHost
.
If you'd prefer, you can manually edit the desired PowerShell profile script.
Open (or create) your profile script with the command notepad $profile.CurrentUserAllHosts
.
In the profile script, add the following line:
Import-Module posh-git
Save the profile script, then close PowerShell and open a new PowerShell session.
Type git fe
and then press tab. If posh-git has been imported, that command should tab complete to git fetch
.
The Git status summary information provides a wealth of "Git status" information at a glance, all the time in your prompt.
By default, the status summary has the following format:
[{HEAD-name} S +A ~B -C !D | +E ~F -G !H W]
-
[
(BeforeStatus
) -
{HEAD-name}
is the current branch, or the SHA of a detached HEAD- Cyan means the branch matches its remote
- Green means the branch is ahead of its remote (green light to push)
- Red means the branch is behind its remote
- Yellow means the branch is both ahead of and behind its remote
-
S
represents the branch status in relation to remote (tracked origin) branch. Note: This information reflects the state of the remote tracked branch after the lastgit fetch/pull
of the remote.≡
= The local branch in at the same commit level as the remote branch (BranchIdenticalStatus
)↑<num>
= The local branch is ahead of the remote branch by the specified number of commits; agit push
is required to update the remote branch (BranchAheadStatus
)↓<num>
= The local branch is behind the remote branch by the specified number of commits; agit pull
is required to update the local branch (BranchBehindStatus
)<a>↕<b>
= The local branch is both ahead of the remote branch by the specified number of commits (a) and behind by the specified number of commits (b); a rebase of the local branch is required before pushing local changes to the remote branch (BranchBehindAndAheadStatus
). NOTE: this status is only available if$GitPromptSettings.BranchBehindAndAheadDisplay
is set toCompact
.×
= The local branch is tracking a branch that is gone from the remote (BranchGoneStatus
)
-
ABCD
represent the index;|
(DelimStatus
);EFGH
represent the working directory+
= Added files~
= Modified files-
= Removed files!
= Conflicted files- As with
git status
output, index status is displayed in dark green and working directory status in dark red
-
W
represents the overall status of the working directory!
= There are unstaged changes in the working tree (LocalWorkingStatusSymbol
)~
= There are uncommitted changes i.e. staged changes in the working tree waiting to be committed (LocalStagedStatusSymbol
)- None = There are no unstaged or uncommitted changes to the working tree (
LocalDefaultStatusSymbol
)
-
]
(AfterStatus
)
The symbols and surrounding text can be customized by the corresponding properties on $GitPromptSettings
.
For example, a status of [master ≡ +0 ~2 -1 | +1 ~1 -0]
corresponds to the following git status
:
# On branch master
#
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
# modified: this-changed.txt
# modified: this-too.txt
# deleted: gone.ps1
#
# Changed but not updated:
# (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
# (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
# modified: not-staged.ps1
#
# Untracked files:
# (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
# new.file
posh-git adds variables to your session to let you customize it, including $GitPromptSettings
, $GitTabSettings
, and $TortoiseGitSettings
.
For an example of how to configure your PowerShell profile script to import the posh-git module and create a custom prompt function that displays git status info, see the Customizing Your PowerShell Prompt section below.
Note on performance: Displaying file status in the git prompt for a very large repo can be prohibitively slow.
Rather than turn off file status entirely ($GitPromptSettings.EnableFileStatus = $false
), you can disable it on a repo-by-repo basis by adding individual repository paths to $GitPromptSettings.RepositoriesInWhichToDisableFileStatus
.
When you import the posh-git module, it will replace PowerShell's default prompt function with a new prompt function. The posh-git prompt function will display Git status summary information when the current directory is inside a Git repository. posh-git will not replace the prompt function if it has detected that you have your own, customized prompt function.
The prompt function provided by posh-git creates a prompt that looks like this:
You can customize the posh-git prompt function or define your own custom prompt function.
The rest of this section covers how to customize posh-git's prompt function using the global variable $GitPromptSettings
.
For instance, you can customize the default prompt prefix to display a colored timestamp with these settings:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptPrefix.Text = '$(Get-Date -f "MM-dd HH:mm:ss") '
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptPrefix.ForegroundColor = [ConsoleColor]::Magenta
This will change the prompt to:
If you would prefer not to have any path under your home directory abbreviated with ~
, use the following setting:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptAbbreviateHomeDirectory = $false
This will change the prompt to:
If you would like to change the color of the path, you can use the following setting on Windows:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptPath.ForegroundColor = 'Orange'
Note: Setting the ForegroundColor to a color name, other than one of the standard ConsoleColor names, only works on Windows. On Windows, posh-git uses the
System.Drawing.ColorTranslator.FromHtml()
method to parse a color name as an HTML color. For a complete list of HTML colors, see this W3Schools page.
If you are on Linux or macOS and desire an Orange path, you will need to specify the RGB value for Orange e.g.:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptPath.ForegroundColor = 0xFFA500
This will change the prompt to:
If you would like to make your prompt span two lines, with a newline after the Git status summary, use this setting:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptBeforeSuffix.Text = '`n'
This will change the prompt to:
You can swap the order of the path and the Git status summary with the following setting:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptWriteStatusFirst = $true
This will change the prompt to:
Finally, you can combine these settings to customize the posh-git prompt fairly significantly.
In the DefaultPromptSuffix
field below, we are prepending the PowerShell history id number before the prompt char >
e.g.:
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptWriteStatusFirst = $true
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptBeforeSuffix.Text = '`n$([DateTime]::now.ToString("MM-dd HH:mm:ss"))'
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptBeforeSuffix.ForegroundColor = 0x808080
$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptSuffix = ' $((Get-History -Count 1).id + 1)$(">" * ($nestedPromptLevel + 1)) '
This will change the prompt to:
If you'd like to make any of these changes permanent, i.e. available whenever you start PowerShell, put the corresponding setting(s) in one of your profile scripts after the line that imports posh-git.
For reference, the following layouts show the relative position of the various parts of the posh-git prompt.
Note that <>
denotes parts of the prompt that may not appear depending on the status of settings and whether or not
the current dir is in a Git repository.
To simplify the layout, DP
is being used as an abbreviation for DefaultPrompt
settings.
Default prompt layout:
{DPPrefix}{DPPath}{PathStatusSeparator}<{BeforeStatus}{Status}{AfterStatus}>{DPBeforeSuffix}<{DPDebug}><{DPTimingFormat}>{DPSuffix}
Prompt layout when DefaultPromptWriteStatusFirst is set to $true:
{DPPrefix}<{BeforeStatus}{Status}{AfterStatus}>{PathStatusSeparator}{DPPath}{DPBeforeSuffix}<{DPDebug}><{DPTimingFormat}>{DPSuffix}
If you require even more customization than $GitPromptSettings
provides, you can create your own prompt
function to show whatever information you want.
See the Customizing Your PowerShell Prompt wiki page for details.
However, if you need a custom prompt to perform some non-prompt logic, you can still use posh-git's prompt function to
write out a prompt string. This can be done with the $GitPromptScriptBlock
variable as shown below e.g.:
# my profile.ps1
function prompt {
# Your non-prompt logic here
# Have posh-git display its default prompt
& $GitPromptScriptBlock
}
And if you'd like to write prompt text before and/or after the posh-git prompt,
you can use posh-git's Write-Prompt
command as shown below:
# my profile.ps1
function prompt {
# Your non-prompt logic here
$prompt = Write-Prompt "Text before posh-git prompt " -ForegroundColor ([ConsoleColor]::Green)
$prompt += & $GitPromptScriptBlock
$prompt += Write-Prompt "Text after posh-git prompt" -ForegroundColor ([ConsoleColor]::Magenta)
if ($prompt) { "$prompt " } else { " " }
}
- Keith Dahlby, https://solutionizing.net/
- Mark Embling, https://www.markembling.info/
- Jeremy Skinner, https://www.jeremyskinner.co.uk/