Dan's zsh config

A modern zsh setup with Antidote + Starship.

Installation

0. Install a Nerd Font and configure your terminal to use the installed font.

1. Install required packages - on Arch everything is available via AUR. For other OS / distributions, follow the upstream installation instructions.

   yay zsh zsh-antidote starship
   

2. Make zsh your default shell

   chsh -s $(which zsh)
   

   Note: if you wish to run this command with sudo, you have to specify the current user:

   sudo chsh -s $(which zsh) $USER
   

3. Clone this repo to your $ZDOTDIR location

   git clone git@github.com:dstockhammer/zsh.git ~/.config/zsh
   

4. Create a .zshenv that configures zsh to use $ZDOTDIR

   cat << 'EOF' >| ~/.zshenv
   export ZDOTDIR=$HOME/.config/zsh
   [[ -f \$ZDOTDIR/.zshenv ]] && . \$ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
   EOF
   

   Note: If you didn't install antidote via AUR, you'll have to configure the antidote dir. Add it to .zshenv before everything else: export ANTIDOTE_DIR="/path/to/antidote"

5. Switch to zsh and enjoy 🌟🦄🌟

   zsh
   

   Alternatively, if you're already using zsh, completely restart your shell. Do not just reload your config with source ~/.zshenv.

Misc

UTF-8 locale

The Starship prompt uses Unicode symbols; an ASCII locale can make typed text overwrite the prompt. At startup, .zshrc keeps an existing UTF-8 locale or automatically selects a supported one, preferring C.UTF-8. It sets LC_CTYPE, or updates LC_ALL if that override is already set. This applies to the shell and its child processes, without changing system settings.

If no supported UTF-8 locale is available, .zshrc stops initialization with a nonzero status and prints instructions for installing or generating one. On Debian/Ubuntu, install locales with sudo apt install locales. On Debian/Ubuntu/Arch, uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 in /etc/locale.gen and run sudo locale-gen. After restarting the shell, locale charmap should report UTF-8.

WSL browser integration

To configure WSL to open browser URLs in Windows, you can use the wslview utility, which is a part of the wslu package.

sudo apt install wslu

Configure wslview to open your browser of choice in Windows. Here is an example for Firefox:

wslview -r $(wslpath -au 'C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe')