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Starship: A minimal, fast, and customizable prompt for any shell

(starship.rs)
457 points benoitg | 2 comments | 24 Jun 25 11:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.408s | source
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hiAndrewQuinn ◴[24 Jun 25 12:36 UTC] No.44365512[source]▶
I like maximalist prompts, and indeed Starship is what Shell Bling Ubuntu [1] installs on a new dev machine. But they're not everyone's cup of tea.

If I wanted to recommend to someone the min-maxed, highest density thing they could add to their prompt, it would simply be the time your current prompt appeared + the amount of time the last command you ran took.

These two pieces of information together make it very easy for you (or your local sysadmin (or an LLM looking over your digital shoulder)) to piece together a log of exactly what happened when. This kind of psuedo-non-repudiation can be invaluable for debugging sessions when you least expect it.

This was a tip I distilled from Michael W. Lucas's Networking for System Administrators a few years ago, which remains my preferred recommendation for any developers looking to learn just enough about networking to not feel totally lost when talking to an actual network engineer.

Bonus nerd points if you measure time in seconds since the UNIX epoch. Very easy and fast to run time delta calculations if you do that:

    [0 1719242840] $ echo "foo"
    [0 1719242905] $ echo "fell asleep before hitting enter" && sleep 5
    [5 1719242910] $
[1]: https://github.com/hiAndrewQuinn/shell-bling-ubuntu
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skydhash ◴[24 Jun 25 12:45 UTC] No.44365588[source]▶
For personal workstation, the current directory is enough. Maybe I change the color based the status of the last command. That’s pretty much the only information I need before entering any command. Everything else can be accessed when I really need it.
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acedTrex ◴[24 Jun 25 13:00 UTC] No.44365734[source]▶
You don't need to know what branch you're on before running commands? I cant tell you the number of times ive been on the wrong branch executing stuff.
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kccqzy ◴[24 Jun 25 14:40 UTC] No.44366786[source]▶
I'm highly aware of which branch I'm on. Because it's because I don't use any scripts or automation that switches branches; I only ever switch branches manually so I have that awareness.
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1. slightwinder ◴[24 Jun 25 15:27 UTC] No.44367266[source]▶
How well does this work when you work on multiple repos with longer pauses inbetween?

And the Branch is also an unintrusive reminder that you are in a path under versioncontrol.

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2. jonhohle ◴[24 Jun 25 17:49 UTC] No.44368835[source]▶
not op, but if I haven’t been in a working directory for a while, I always run `git status` anyway. Then I know the branch and any out of date files. I usually run `git pull —-rebase` and get everything back up to date. I try not to leave broken branches around, so It’s rare that knowing which branch I’m on is an issue.