📢 Announcements

[ericbn]

Subscribe to this discussion to receive announcements about Zim updates. It will be mainly used to announce changes in modules and in the Zim installation. To check the changes in the Zim core, always refer to the CHANGELOG.md file.

[ericbn]

Let me start with the news from the last few months:

• The zimrc template was updated so the static initialization scripts are created when they don't exist. Just one line changed here. By static initialization scripts I mean ${ZIM_HOME}/login_init.zsh and ${ZIM_HOME}/init.zsh. This further guarantees that Zim will work after you first pull your dotfiles from an external source, even if don't include your static initialization scripts with them, which actually is the best practice since the scripts contain hardcoded paths to ${ZIM_HOME}.
• The new exa module adds aliases and better defaults for exa (a modern replacement for ls).
• The new asciiship prompt theme is a heavily reduced, ASCII-only version of the Spaceship and Starship prompts. It's now the default theme for new Zim installations, as updated in the zimrc template here.
• The termtitle module now allows a custom title format for each separate hook, if you have multiple hooks set.
• And more important than all, we now have a website and a new logo thanks to @michaelhthomas and @OneMohrTime!

[ericbn]

New announcements for the last 20 days:

• A new fzf module configures fzf for faster fetching of files and directories names.
• A new pvenv module helps managing all python venvs in one place.
• A new duration-info module exposes to prompts how long the last command took to execute. This can be used by any prompt, like git-info.
• The asciiship prompt now requires duration-info to show the last command duration. The code of duration-info is actually an improved version of the code that was inside asciiship, but that now can be used by other prompts too. Due to this change, duration-info is now also part of the zimrc template for new Zim installation, as updated here.

[ericbn]

New announcements:

• The archive module now has a lsarchive function and sets suffix aliases too.
• A new asdf module sets up asdf, with auto install and optimized usage of the direnv plugin.

[ericbn]

New announcements for the last 20 days:

• The new prompt-pwd module formats the current working directory to be used by prompts. It allows for truncating the path to the git root, and customizing the path component length and the path separator, which are features we already had in some of our prompt themes.
• The gitster, magicmace, and s1ck94 themes now depend on prompt-pwd. Make sure you add zmodule prompt-pwd to your .zimrc if you're using one of them.

[ericbn]

New announcements:

• The zimrc template was updated to also automatically download the zimfw script if it's missing, as suggested by @Konfekt. See the new lines here. This makes the manual installation even easier, and mainly allows keeping your whole ${ZIM_HOME} directory out of version control in your dotfiles, which is a good practice.
• The pvenv module now always upgrades pip, setuptools and wheel before activating the venv.
• Improvements in the git-info module now make it almost 3x faster than before! One of these improvements was also applied to the prompt-pwd module.

[ericbn]

To summarize what happened in the last 3 months:

Thanks to @romkatv's input and to his thoughts in zsh-bench, this is what we've improved in Zim:

• We changed our benchmarks to measure the time to the first prompt appearance (instead of the time to run exit). We're using a different tool (expect) than zsh-bench (script) to measure that time, and @romkatv helped us make sure the times between our different approaches match.
• We don't compile Zsh startup scripts, and we don't compile any scripts in the background anymore. The former is considered "cutting corners" in zsh-bench, and the latter unreliable. In fact, now Zim does not run anything in the background during your shell experience.
• We've added a check-dumpfile action to zimfw. It runs after updating files (in the build, install and update actions), and checks if a new completion configuration needs to be dumped. It's intended to be used with compinit -C to guarantee the same checks that compinit does, since using compinit -C alone is also considered "cutting corners" in zsh-bench.
• We've also updated our templates to set ZSH_AUTOSUGGEST_MANUAL_REBIND=1 and source the zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions module last.

With these updates, there were significant changes in our dotfile templates. There are no templates for zshenv and zlogin anymore, as the ${ZIM_HOME}/login_init.zsh script is now deprecated. You can check the current templates here.

[ericbn]

New announcements:

• The completion module was updated with better users and ssh hosts completion.
• The input module binds insert-last-word even in viins mode.
• The git module keeps getting improved.
• Keymap indicator was added to the asciiship prompt theme.
• The sorin theme now also depends on the prompt-pwd module. Make sure you add zmodule prompt-pwd to your .zimrc if you're using it.

[ericbn]

New announcements for the last month:

• The minimal theme was simplified to allow minimal customization, and now depends on the prompt-pwd module too. Make sure you add zmodule prompt-pwd to your .zimrc if you're using it. The original magic enter feature was moved to a separate magic-enter module. Also add zmodule magic-enter to your .zimrc to enable it back.
• The prompt-pwd module was updated to allow truncating the number of trailing path components. This feature is used by the minimal theme.

[ericbn]

New announcements:

• A new run-help module adds the run-help function, that figures out where to get the best help, and gets it.
• A new k module adds a k function that can be used replacing an uncountable amount of kubectl aliases.

[ericbn]

New announcements:

• The completion module was updated to use the same improved completion dumpfile check that zsh4humans uses, developed by @romkatv. While Zsh's compinit only checks if the total number of completion functions changed, this improved check will compare the full path and last modification time of all the completion functions for changes. This check is done during the initialization of the module, using an extra .dat file that it generates. And with this, the zimfw check-dumpfile action is deprecated. Thanks again, @romkatv!
• The eriner theme now also depends on the prompt-pwd module. Make sure you add zmodule prompt-pwd to your .zimrc and then run zimfw update if you're using this theme.

[ericbn]

New announcements:

• The asdf module was updated to work with breaking-changes in asdf v0.12.0.
• A new bira prompt theme was added, forking the original bira.