athityakumar/colorls

Color LS

A Ruby script that colorizes the ls output with color and icons. Here are the screenshots of working example on an iTerm2 terminal (Mac OS), oh-my-zsh with powerlevel9k theme and powerline nerd-font + awesome-config font with the Solarized Dark color theme.

If you're interested in knowing the powerlevel9k configuration to get this prompt, have a look at this gist.

Table of contents

• Usage
  • Flags
    • -1
    • -a (or) --all
    • -A (or) --almost-all
    • -d (or) --dirs
    • -f (or) --files
    • --help
    • -l (or) --long
    • --report
    • --tree (or) --tree=[DEPTH]
    • --gs (or) --git-status
    • --sd (or) --sort-dirs or --group-directories-first
    • --sf (or) --sort-files
    • -t
  • Combination of flags
• Installation
• Recommended configurations
• Custom configurations
• Updating
• Uninstallation
• Contributing
• License

Usage

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Man pages have been added. Checkout man colorls.

Flags

• With -1 : Lists one entry per line

  

• With -a (or) --all : Does not ignore entries starting with '.'

  

• With -A (or) --almost-all : Does not ignore entries starting with '.', except ./ and ../

  

• With -d (or) --dirs : Shows only directories

  

• With -f (or) --files : Shows only files

  

• With --help : Prints a very helpful help menu

  

• With -l (or) --long : Shows in long listing format

  

• With --report : Shows brief report about number of files and folders shown

  

• With --tree (or) --tree=[DEPTH] : Shows tree view of the directory with the specified depth (default 3)

  

• With --gs (or) --git-status : Shows git status for each entry

  

• With --sd (or) --sort-dirs or --group-directories-first : Shows directories first, followed by files

  

• With --sf (or) --sort-files : Shows files first, followed by directories

  

• With -t : Sort by modification time, newest first (NEED TO ADD IMAGE)

• With color options : --light or --dark can be passed as a flag, to choose the appropriate color scheme. By default, the dark color scheme is chosen. In order to tweak any color, read Custom configurations.

Combination of flags

• Using --gs with -t :

  

• Using --gs with -l :

  

• Using --sd with -l and -A :

  

• Using --non-human-readable with -l :

  • This will print the file sizes in bytes (non-human readable format)

  

Installation

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1. Install Ruby (preferably, version >= 2.6 via a version manager like rbenv)

2. Download and install a Nerd Font so you can see the library icons. Have a look at the Nerd Font README for installation instructions. We're using "Hack Nerd Font" for this guide.

   Note for MacOS users using the stock terminal - Please enable Nerd Font at Terminal > Preferences > Profiles > Text > Font. Click Change.. and select Hack Nerd Font - Regular

   Note for iTerm2 users - Please enable the Nerd Font at iTerm2 > Preferences > Profiles > Text > Non-ASCII font > Hack Regular Nerd Font Complete.

   Note for HyperJS users - Please add "Hack Nerd Font" Font as an option to fontFamily in your ~/.hyper.js file.

3. Install the colorls ruby gem with gem install colorls

   Note for rbenv users - In case of load error when using lc, please try the below patch.

   rbenv rehash
   rehash
   

4. Enable tab completion for flags by entering following line to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) :

   source $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/tab_complete.sh
   

   Don't forget to restart your terminal

5. Start using colorls :tada:

6. Have a look at Recommended configurations and Custom configurations.

If you're having trouble following the installation guide above, here's a video reproducing steps 2 to 6.

Recommended configurations

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1. To add some short command (say, lc) with some flag options (say, -l, -A, --sd) by default, add this to your shell configuration file (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, etc.) :

   alias lc='colorls -lA --sd'
   

2. For changing the icon(s) to other unicode icons of choice (select icons from here), change the YAML files in a text editor of your choice (say, subl)

   subl $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/yaml
   

Custom configurations

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You can overwrite the existing icons and colors mapping by copying the yaml files from $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/yaml into ~/.config/colorls, and changing them.

• To overwrite color mapping :

  Please have a look at the list of supported color names. You may also use a color hex code as long as it is quoted within the YAML file and prefaced with a # symbol.

  Let's say that you're using the dark color scheme and would like to change the color of untracked file (??) in the --git-status flag to yellow. Copy the defaut dark_colors.yaml and change it.

  Check if the ~/.config/colorls directory exists. If it doesn't exist, create it using the following command:

  mkdir -p ~/.config/colorls
  

  And then

  cp $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/yaml/dark_colors.yaml ~/.config/colorls/dark_colors.yaml
  

  In the ~/.config/colorls/dark_colors.yaml file, change the color set for untracked from darkorange to yellow, and save the change.

  untracked: yellow
  

  Or, using hex color codes:

  untracked: '#FFFF00'
  

• To overwrite icon mapping :

  Please have a look at the list of supported icons. Let's say you want to add an icon for swift files. Copy the default files.yaml and change it.

  cp $(dirname $(gem which colorls))/yaml/files.yaml ~/.config/colorls/files.yaml`
  

  In the ~/.config/colorls/files.yaml file, add a new icon / change an existing icon, and save the change.

  swift: "\uF179"
  

• User contributed alias configurations :

  • @rjhilgefort

Updating

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Want to update to the latest version of colorls?

gem update colorls

Uninstallation

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Want to uninstall and revert back to the old style? No issues (sob). Please feel free to open an issue regarding how we can enhance colorls.

gem uninstall colorls

Contributing

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Your contributions are always welcome! Please have a look at the contribution guidelines first. :tada:

License

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The MIT License (MIT) 2017 - Athitya Kumar. Please have a look at the LICENSE.md for more details.