posh-git

Table of contents:

• Overview
• Versions
• Installation
• Using posh-git
• Git status summary information
• Customization variables
• Customizing the posh-git prompt
• Based on work by

Overview

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

git ch

git checkout

cherry

cherry-pick

git pull or ma

git pull origin main

Versions

posh-git v1.0

| Windows (AppVeyor) | Linux/macOS (Travis) | Code Coverage Status | |--------------------|----------------------|----------------------| | | | |

README • CHANGELOG

• 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)
  • All SSH commands removed from

    posh-git

    and moved into the new module posh-sshell

Releases

• v1.0.0 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v1.0.0-beta5 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v1.0.0-beta4 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v1.0.0-beta3 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v1.0.0-beta2 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v1.0.0-beta1 ( README • CHANGELOG )

posh-git v0.x

| Windows (AppVeyor) | Code Coverage Status | |--------------------|----------------------| | | |

README • CHANGELOG

• Supports Windows PowerShell 3+
• Does not support PowerShell Core
• Avoids breaking changes, maintaining v0.x

Releases

• v0.7.3 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v0.7.1 ( README • CHANGELOG )
• v0.7.0 ( README • CHANGELOG )

Installation

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.

Prerequisites

Before installing posh-git make sure the following prerequisites have been met.

1. 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

   .

2. On Windows, script execution policy must be set to either

   RemoteSigned

   or

   Unrestricted

   . Check the script execution policy setting by executing

   Get-ExecutionPolicy

   . If the policy is not set to one of the two required values, run PowerShell as Administrator and execute

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser -Confirm

   .

3. Git must be installed and available via the PATH environment variable. Check that

   git

   is accessible from PowerShell by executing

   git --version

   from PowerShell. If

   git

   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.

Installing posh-git via PowerShellGet on Linux, macOS and Windows

posh-git is available on the PowerShell Gallery and can be installed using the built-in PowerShellGet module.

1. Start Windows PowerShell 5.x or PowerShell >= v6 (

   pwsh

   ).

2. 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
   PowerShellGet\Install-Module posh-git -Scope CurrentUser -Force
   

   NOTE: If you're asked to trust packages from the PowerShell Gallery, answer

   yes

   to continue installation of posh-git

   OR

   # (B) You've already installed a previous version of posh-git from the PowerShell Gallery
   PowerShellGet\Update-Module posh-git
   

Installing posh-git via Chocolatey

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

Installing posh-git via Scoop

Another popular package manager for Windows is Scoop, which you can also use to install posh-git. With Scoop installed, execute these commands to install posh-git and import it into your profile:

scoop install posh-git
Add-PoshGitToProfile

Installing posh-git Manually

If you need to test/debug changes prior to contributing here, or would otherwise prefer to install posh-git without the aid of a package manager, you can execute

Import-Module 

~\git\posh-git

Import-Module ~\git\posh-git\src\posh-git.psd1

Using posh-git

After you have installed posh-git, you need to configure your PowerShell session to use the posh-git module.

Step 1: Import posh-git

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

Step 2: Import posh-git from your PowerShell profile

You do not want to have to manually execute the

Import-Module

Add-PoshGitToProfile

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

Import-Module posh-git

$profile.CurrentUserAllHosts

If you want posh-git to be available in just the current host, then execute

Add-PoshGitToProfile

$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

Add-PoshGitToProfile -AllUsers -AllHosts

$profile.AllUsersAllHosts

If you want to configure posh-git for all users but only for the current host, drop the

-AllHosts

$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

Import-Module posh-git

Save the profile script, then close PowerShell and open a new PowerShell session. Type

git fe

git fetch

If you want posh-git to detect your own aliases for git, then you must have set the alias before importing posh-git. So if you have

Set-Alias g git

Import-Module posh-git

g checkout

git

Git status summary information

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 status information reflects the state of the remote tracked branch after the last

git fetch/pull

git fetch

git fetch --all

• ≡

  = The local branch in at the same commit level as the remote branch (

  BranchIdenticalStatus

  )

• ↑

  = The local branch is ahead of the remote branch by the specified number of commits; a

  git push

  is required to update the remote branch (

  BranchAheadStatus

  )

• ↓

  = The local branch is behind the remote branch by the specified number of commits; a

  git pull

  is required to update the local branch (

  BranchBehindStatus

  )

• ↕

  = 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 to

  Compact

  .

• ×

  = 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

[main ≡ +0 ~2 -1 | +1 ~1 -0]

git status

# On branch main
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD ..." to unstage)
#
#        modified:   this-changed.txt
#        modified:   this-too.txt
#        deleted:    gone.ps1
#
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add ..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- ..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#        modified:   not-staged.ps1
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add ..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#        new.file

Customization variables

posh-git adds variables to your session to let you customize it, including

$GitPromptSettings

$GitTabSettings

$TortoiseGitSettings

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

$GitPromptSettings.RepositoriesInWhichToDisableFileStatus

Customizing the posh-git prompt

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

If you'd like to make any of following 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 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

~

$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(string colorName)

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

>

$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:

Finally, the path portion of the prompt can be contained within delimiters. For instance, if you would like the containing characters to be red, curly braces, the following settings can be used:

$GitPromptSettings.BeforePath = '{'
$GitPromptSettings.AfterPath = '}'
$GitPromptSettings.BeforePath.ForegroundColor = 'Red'
$GitPromptSettings.AfterPath.ForegroundColor = 'Red'

With these additional values, the previous prompt would become

Prompt Layouts

For reference, the following layouts show the relative position of the various parts of the posh-git prompt. Note that

<>

DP

DefaultPrompt

Default prompt layout:

{DPPrefix}{BeforePath}{DPPath}{AfterPath}{PathStatusSeparator}{DPBeforeSuffix}{DPSuffix}

Prompt layout when DefaultPromptWriteStatusFirst is set to $true:

{DPPrefix}{PathStatusSeparator}{BeforePath}{DPPath}{AfterPath}{DPBeforeSuffix}{DPSuffix}

Displaying Error Information

If you want to display the error status of the last command, you can use the values stored in the

$global:GitPromptValues

$LastExitCode

$?

DollarQuestion

$LastExitCode

!

$?

$false

function global:PromptWriteErrorInfo() {
    if ($global:GitPromptValues.DollarQuestion) { return }

if ($global:GitPromptValues.LastExitCode) {
    "`e[31m(" + $global:GitPromptValues.LastExitCode + ") `e[0m"
}
else {
    "`e[31m! `e[0m"
}
}
$global:GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptBeforeSuffix.Text = '`n$(PromptWriteErrorInfo)$([DateTime]::now.ToString("MM-dd HH:mm:ss"))'

When a PowerShell command fails, this is the prompt you will see:

When an external application returns a non-zero exit code, 1 in this case, you will see the exit code in the prompt:

Note that until you run an external application that sets

$LASTEXITCODE

LastExitCode

DollarQuestion

$global:GitPromptValues

IsAdmin

LastPrompt

LastPrompt

$GitPromptScriptBlock

If you require even more customization than

$GitPromptSettings

However, if you need a custom prompt just to perform some non-prompt logic, you can still use posh-git's prompt function to write out the prompt string. This can be done with the

$GitPromptScriptBlock

# 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

# 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 { " " }
}

Based on work by

• Keith Dahlby, http://solutionizing.net/
• Mark Embling, http://www.markembling.info/
• Jeremy Skinner, http://www.jeremyskinner.co.uk/