Modernizing my Command-line Environment

When I'm actually working at my computer, I spend a lot of time in either Emacs writing code, or in a terminal running things. I'm not a command-line zealot (you can pry Things, Fantastical and Gmail from my cold, RSI-stricken hands), but since I do spend a lot of time at a command line, I'd like it to be a nice place to work from. For a long time now, my command-line environment has been about the same: iTerm 2 as my terminal emulator, Tmux as my terminal multiplexer Zsh as my shell, and the GNU variants of the standard UNIX utilities to do all the things.

In the course of working on this site over the last month, I've thought about seeing if newer alternatives to the tools I've been using were worth switching to. I've been thinking about this on and off since I saw Julia Evans' list of new(ish) command line tools. Reading Alex Plescan's article on Wezterm gave me the push to finally go ahead and do it. This is a quick summary of the things I switched to.

Terminal emulator: Wezterm

Wezterm is a modern terminal emulator, written in Rust and with a number of interesting features like Lua configuration, built-in multiplexing and a flexible keybinding system. Rust is definitely (one of) the systems programming language of the future. Built-in multiplexing means I don't have to use tmux anymore. Since it uses Lua for configuration, I can keep my customizations in version control like the rest of my configs. Lua configuration also enables very flexible keybindings, which means my terminal and Emacs now have the same keybindings for similar actions (mostly moving around and splitting windows). To be honest, I didn't actually have any problems with iTerm 2 and tmux, but it's nice to use one less program, and I feel a little more future-proofed. Plus, if I ever go back to using a non-Mac computer, I can still use Wezterm.

Directory movement: Zoxide

This is probably the new tool that I use the most. Zoxide is essentially a smarter cd command. As I use the z command to move around directories, it records what I use and intelligently chooses which directory to move in to. For example, the source for this site lives in ~/src/basus-v4. After doing z ~/src/basus-v4 once to move there, in the future I can just do z v4 and it will take me to right place. The selection algorithm is deterministic and well-documented, so you won't be surprised by its behavior. There is also an interactive version (using the next tool on the list) that's helpful when there are a number of different directories with the same name. For example, I have a lot of directories named src in various places in various places, so zi src pops up an interactive menu to choose the right one. And that brings me to:

Better finding: fzf and ripgrep

Zoxide's interactive mode uses fzf a general purpose fuzzy-finder. It gives you an interactive filter for any kind of list (a list of directories in Zoxide's case) and let's you choose which option you want. I use it a lot for fuzzy searching over my command history. fzf integrates with the command line in general and with your shell. Personally, I find it particularly powerful in conjuction with ripgrep: a search tool similar to the UNIX standard grep. Together I can quickly search over the contents of any directory, even if I'm not sure exactly what I'm looking for. This is particularly useful when working on the site because I can easily search my backlog of entries and posts to find something I wrote about, even if I'm not sure when or where. Truth be told, I never really learned the intricacies of UNIX find or grep and now I don't have to.

Better file printing: bat

I don't use this as much as the others, because I usually just open files in Emacs. But sometimes I'm wandering around the filesystem and I just want a quick peek at a file and that's where bat comes in. It prints files on the screen, like UNIX cat, but with a number of improvements. Aesthetically, it supports syntax highlighting for a lot of file types, and customizable color themes. It also has git integration to show file modifications, and automatic paging for large files (with the correct arguments to preserve colors etc.). It also integrates with a bunch of other tools including fzf. It may not be a big leap in functionality like the others, but it does make the command-line experience much more pleasing to the eye.

Better change tracking: git delta

bat will integrate with git to provide syntax highlighting for diffs, but delta adds a bunch more functionality and customizations. This includes syntax highlighting (using the same color themes as bat), word-level diffs (like in GitHub), line-numbering and also side-by-side views of diffs. Again, not a big functionality upgrade, but an enjoyable improvement to quality of life.

Color theme: Catppuccin Macchiato

Finally, not a tool at all, but a color theme. I like my environment to be as uniform as possible. Functionally, I like having similar keybindings where possible. Aesthetically, it means using the same colors wherever possible. For a long time now I've been using the Zenburn color theme. I still really like it, it's easy on the eyes, with a good contrast ratio between the different colors. However, it started off as a Vim theme and though there are ports of it for a lot of applications, they're not all collected in the same place and in my experience, not 100% consistent. Enter Catppuccin: it's another well-designed pastel color theme, but it also has 4 flavors, a massive array of ports, and a very detailed style guide and instructions for creating new ports. I decided to go with the darker "Macchiato" flavor and found ports for Emacs and Wezterm, and also for fzf, bat, git delta and Obsidian. Even the colors on this site are currently derived from Catppuccin. With the theme in place everywhere, it feels like I have a nicely integrated environment, even if it's made up of a bunch of different tools working together.

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Okay, so I probably spent way more time on all this than I really needed to, but I am very pleased with the result, both in terms of functionality and looks. I also feel pretty future-proofed. I might adopt new tools in the future, but I think I won't feel like I need to make a change anytime soon. On a separate note, it was a pleasant surprise to see how well the newer tools integrated with each other to give a cohesive command-line experience. I love the UNIX philosophy and tools as much as the next hacker, but they always felt just a little too disconnected for me. With this current set of tools, I feel more like I'm in more of a unified environment.