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AX-ZSH: Alex' Modular ZSH Configuration

AX-ZSH is a modular configuration system for the Z shell (ZSH). It provides sane defaults and is extendable by plugins.

AX-ZSH integrates well with Powerlevel10k and other extensions, even plugins of OhMyZsh, see below.

The homepage of AX-ZSH can be found at GitHub: https://github.com/alexbarton/ax-zsh.

Installation

Prerequisites:

Installing AX-ZSH is a two-step process:

  1. Clone or copy the source files into the ~/.axzsh directory,
  2. Run the ~/.axzsh/install.sh script.

The install.sh script creates symbolic links for ~/.zprofile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.zlogin, and ~/.zlogout (don't worry, already existing files are backed up).

Note: The installation is per-user and only changes/installs files into the home directory of the current user (~). AX-ZSH is not meant to be installed globally for all users on a system at once, and you don't need to become "root" or any other user with elevated privileges!

Installation using Git

When using Git, the preferred method, it is best to directly clone the AX-ZSH repository into the ~/.axzsh directory and call install.sh from this location:

git clone https://github.com/alexbarton/ax-zsh.git ~/.axzsh
~/.axzsh/install.sh

Installation without Git

Note: If you do not install AX-ZSH with Git, you will not be able to upgrade itself afterwards with the integrated axzsh upgrade command! Therefore this method is not recommended for normal use!

curl -Lo ax-zsh-master.zip https://github.com/alexbarton/ax-zsh/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
unzip ax-zsh-master.zip
mv ax-zsh-master ~/.axzsh
~/.axzsh/install.sh

Post-Installation Tasks

After installing AX-ZSH, using Git or via an archive file, you should close all running ZSH sessions and restart them to activate AX-ZSH. And maybe you want to change your default shell to ZSH if you haven't already?

For example like this:

# Set new default shell
chsh -s $(command -v zsh)

# Replace running shell with a ZSH login shell
exec $(command -v zsh) -l

Upgrade

When you used Git to install AX-ZSH (and/or plugins), you can use the axzshctl command to upgrade AX-ZSH itself and external plugins like this:

axzshctl upgrade

Usage

AX-ZSH comes with a hopefully sane default configuration and can be extended using plugins. Different types of plugins are supported:

Configuration of other applications & tools

Some tools, notably remote access tools like ssh(1) and screen-multiplexers like screen(1) or tmux(1), can be configured to better support AX-ZSH. For example, AX-ZSH tries to adjust itself for a sane terminal and locale setup, which in turn requires some information (mostly environment variables) being available and passed to the ZSH running AX-ZSH on the (target) system.

OpenSSH Client

If you are using the OpenSSH client, the following configuration in your ~/.ssh/config file is very useful:

# Some defaults.
# Note: Place this block LAST to not override some other settings, if any, as
# OpenSSH uses the first(!) match it finds!
Host *
    # Pass some environment variables to the remote host to allow the remote
    # system to get a better idea of your used and desired working environment:
    SendEnv COLORTERM LANG LC_* TERM_* TZ

    # Don't hash host names in the ~/.ssh/known_hosts file, so that ZSH
    # compeltion functions can detect helpful host names to complete.
    # Note: This has an "security impact". It is on YOU to check what your
    # security requirements are!
    HashKnownHosts no

OpenSSH Client

On an OpenSSH server, the following configuration in one of its configuration files (for example, a good place is in a drop-in configuration file like /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/local.conf) allows SSH clients to pass some environment variables to the server:

# Allow SSH client to pass some "safe" environment variables to the server:
AcceptEnv COLORTERM LANG LC_* TERM_* TZ

This is required for the SSH client configuration shown above to work.

Don't forget to have sshd reload its configuration, for example using systemctl reload ssh.service or pkill -o -HUP sshd, or whatever is used on your operating system.

Check whether all locally available "useful" plug-ins are activated

Most plugins can be enabled even when the commands they work with aren't available and won't do any harm. But to keep ZSH startup times low, you should only enable plugins that are useable on your local system and which you actually plan to use.

You can use the following command to let AX-ZSH scan the status of all locally available plugins:

axzshctl check-plugins

It will summarize the status of all enabled plugins, and suggest to enable plugins which seem to make sense on the system and to disable enabled plugins that seem not to be supported (for example because of missing dependencies).

List enabled plugins

Run the following command to list all currently enabled plugins:

axzshctl list-enabled

Enable plugins

AX-ZSH comes with a sane "core ZSH configuration", but it can show its true strengths when enabling additional plugins for additional tools and commands that are available on your system and you want to use.

Different types of plugins are supported (see the introduction to the section "usage" above) which are differentiated by their identifier:

You can enable one or more plugins like this:

axzshctl enable-plugin <identifier> [<identifier> […]]

Hint: Tab-completion works for sub-commands and already locally available plugin names!

Some examples:

# Enable some plugins bundled with AX-ZSH:
axzshctl enable-plugin editor_select git ssh_autoadd

# Enable the Powerlevel10k "theme plugin" from GitHub, see
# <https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k>:
axzshctl enable-plugin romkatv/powerlevel10k

# Enable the "fast-syntax-highlighting" plugin from GitHub, see
# <https://github.com/zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlighting>:
axzshctl enable-plugin zdharma-continuum/fast-syntax-highlighting

# Enable the Git and tmux plugins of OhMyZsh:
axzshctl enable-plugin @ohmyzsh/git @ohmyzsh/tmux

Custom local plugins

You can link custom plugins stored in arbitrary directories using axzshctl by specifying the complete path name. Or you can place additional plugins into the $AXZSH/custom_plugins folder which is searched by the axzshctl tool by default.

In addition you can set the AXZSH_PLUGIN_D variable (and ZSH_CUSTOM like OhMyZsh) to specify additional plugin search directories.

Disable plugins

Run the following command to disable a currently enabled plugin:

axzshctl disable-plugin <identifier> [<identifier> […]]

Hint: Tab-completion works for sub-commands and plugin names!

Update plugin cache

AX-ZSH uses a "plugin cache" to speedup ZSH start times. This cache is automatically updated when using the axzshctl sub-commands, for example when enabling or disabling plugins, or when upgrading the AX-ZSH installation and all plugins.

But you have to update the cache when manually installing plugins or during development of a own local plugin after updating its code!

Run the following command to update the AX-ZSH cache:

axzshctl update-caches

Other axzshctl sub-commands

Please run axzshctl --help to get a full list of a available sub-commands:

axzshctl --help

Integration with other projects

Powerlevel10k

AX-ZSH supports Powerlevel10k out of the box, you just have to install it as a plugin:

axzshctl enable-plugin romkatv/powerlevel10k

Hint: Once the Powerlevel10k plugin theme is installed, you can use the regular axzshctl set-theme command to enable it, like for any other installed theme: axzshctl set-theme powerlevel10k.

AX-ZSH & local ZSH configuration

Don't modify ~/.zprofile, ~/.zshrc, ~/.zlogin, or ~/.zlogout! These are links to "AX-ZSH"-private files that can become overwritten when updating.

You can use the following files for local ZSH configuration:

  1. AX-ZSH doesn't use ~/.zshenv in any way. So you can use this file for your own purposes (for example, to set up some environment variables that AX-ZSH relies on).

  2. AX-ZSH reads the optional files ~/.zprofile.local, ~/.zshrc.local, ~/.zlogin.local, and ~/.zlogout.local after its own core initialization files when present.

Environment variables

Expected to be already set:

Validated and/or set up by core plugins:

AX-ZSH Copyright (c) 2015-2022 Alexander Barton alex@barton.de