marlonrichert / zsh-launchpad

🚀 Simple, educational dotfiles template to get started with Zsh and learn about its features

Z Shell Launchpad 🚀

A simple dotfiles template to kick-start/bootstrap your zsh config and start learning how to get the most out of your shell.

Copy these files into your home dir and you're good to go!

What is this? What are its goals?

• It’s a fully functional set of dotfiles that works out of the box. Its goal is to help you be productive with Zsh right off the bat.
• It’s a template for you to customize to your own liking. Its goal is to give you a solid basis for your own Zsh, but without filling in details that are outside the scope of Zsh itself.
• It’s an educational tool with lots of examples and lots of comments to help you understand what the heck is going on. Its goal is to be a springboard for you to start your journey into learning Zsh, with plenty of links pointing you to further reading.

However, this is not a finished product or a fire-and-forget piece of software with a fixed API. Rather, you’re supposed to read it through and learn from it, then use the knowledge you’ve gained to tailor it to your own needs.

It is, however, opinionated. It gives you what I think is a solid set of sensible defaults and deliberately does not delve into topics that I think are better solved by using good plugins.

Who is this for? Is it right for me?

This template is for those who

• want to have a ready-made config so they can get started with Zsh right away and
• want to actually learn how to write Zsh code and make the most of Zsh’s many features.

There is currently no alternative for new Zsh users that solidly checks both of these boxes. Oh-My-Zsh and other “frameworks” cater to those who strongly want the former, but don't give you any of the latter. Zsh itself also fails in this regard. On one end, its new user wizard tries to give you the former, but, rather than give you decent defaults, forces you to choose from a wide array of confusing options and leaves you with a poorly-documented config full of magic values. On the other end, its An Introduction to the Z Shell tries to give you the latter, but rather than being hands-on, presents you with endless lists of abstract examples without clear, practical uses and hasn't been updated since 1995.

There is clearly a gap in the offerings for new Zsh users. This template is for those who occupy that niche.

However, it does assume you already know how to program. It’s not going to teach you that.

zsh-launchpad's Issues

Great work

Hello,

Very Nice defaults and especially great job on the comments!!!

1 issue I noticed within the completion system:
It picks up the first option in alphabetical order and not giving the choice,
ex:
nano .config/zsh/
gives => nano .config/zsh/functions/

and then
nano .config/zsh/functions/
gives: nano .config/zsh/functions/extract-images

Unless I type: nano .config/zsh/rc.d/07

I won't get that option.
I would expect to chose between the files and folders, because I don't always want the first in alphabetical order.

And again great work on the comments, because understandable basic configs are really missing today in the ZSH world.

Onf

function definition file not found

Describe the bug

Launchpad fails when attempting to read from external plugins used by this repo.

Steps To Reproduce

(On Windows 11)

1. Intall Git Bash
2. Install pacman
3. Move repo files as described in README under home dir
4. Launch Git Bash and execute zsh

Expected behavior

No errors output when running zsh in Git Bash.

Observed behavior

Click to expand

/c/Users/mattm/.local/state/zsh-autocomplete:14: .autocomplete.__init__: function definition file not found
zsh-edit:69: bind: function definition file not found
zsh-edit:70: bind: function definition file not found
zsh-hist:8: no matches found: /c/Users/mattm/.local/state/functions/.hist.*~*.zwc
zcolors.plugin:4: no matches found: /c/Users/mattm/.local/state/functions/*~*.zwc
/c/Users/mattm/.local/state/zsh-autosuggestions:source:1: no such file or directory: /c/Users/mattm/.local/state/zsh-autosuggestions.zsh
/c/Users/mattm/.local/state/zsh-syntax-highlighting:source:2: no such file or directory: /c/Users/mattm/.local/state/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

Environment:

• OS: Windows 11
• Terminal: Git Bash
• Zsh version: 5.9
• Repo version: latest

Additional context