Written by Ali Ben Messaoud
on June 17, 2020

My CLI tools for Ubuntu and Windows

I this tutorial, I’ll present some cli tools I use on Windows and Ubuntu, which make daily tasks easier when dealing with commands and keep me focusing on what is really important. Why? Your terminal can be much, MUCH more productive.

Terminals ship with tab completion, but it is not helpful. I used to add aliases, and I am tired of maintaining their configuration. Oh my ZSH is one of the more popular alternatives to the bare Bash shell. Oh my ZSH predict what you want to type, save many repetitive commands, give you a really powerful autocomplete.

For Ubuntu users, we can install it with these simple commands:

install apt install zsh
install Oh mZSH sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

For Windows users, I suggest to use Git Bash with Windows Terminal:

install https://git-scm.com/downloads
install https://aka.ms/terminal
Download the latest ZSH package: https://packages.msys2.org/package/zsh?repo=msys&variant=x86_64
Extract the content to your Git Bash installation directory usually C:\Program Files\Git
install Oh mZSH sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

edit the ~/.bashrc file and add

# Launch Zsh
if [ -t 1 ]; then
exec zsh
fi

open Terminal and add Git Bash as a profile using this command C:/Program Files/Git/bin/bash.exe -i -l, starting directory %USERPROFILE% and the icon C:/Program Files/Git/mingw64/share/git/git-for-windows.ico.

Oh my ZSH has cool features and can be added as a plugin. One of my favorite plugins are zsh-syntax-highlighting and zsh-autosuggestions:

run git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting and add zsh-syntax-highlighting in your plugins list under ~/.zshrc.
run git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions and add zsh-autosuggestions in your plugins list under ~/.zshrc.

With Oh my ZSH, I use SDKMAN! SDKMAN! helps to manage parallel versions of multiple SDKs. To install it on Ubuntu or Windows, use these commands:

run curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash
run source "$HOME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

Now you can install and manages multiple versions of Java, Maven, Kotlin, etc.

I hope that these tools help to reduce the time spent in the terminal :D

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