# Antigen Antigen is a small set of functions that help you easily manage your shell (zsh) plugins, called bundles. The concept is pretty much the same as bundles in a typical vim+pathogen setup. Antigen is to zsh, what [Vundle][] is to vim. **Please** note that antigen is currently is alpha stage and will have backwards incompatible changes now and then, until we have a pretty stable system we can reason about. **Please** read the commit comments of the changesets when you pull a new version of antigen. # Quick Usage First, clone this repo, probably as a submodule if you have your dotfiles in a git repo, git clone https://github.com/sharat87/antigen.git The usage should be very familiar to you if you use Vundle. A typical `.zshrc` might look like this source /path-to-antigen-clone/antigen.zsh # Load the oh-my-zsh's library. bundle-lib # Bundles from the default repo (robbyrussell's oh-my-zsh). bundle git bundle heroku bundle pip bundle lein bundle command-not-found # Syntax highlighting bundle. bundle zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting # Load the theme. bundle-theme robbyrussell # Tell antigen that you're done. bundle-apply Open your zsh with this zshrc and you should see all the bundles you defined here, getting installed. Once its done, you are ready to roll. The complete syntax for the `bundle` command is discussed further down on this page. # Motivation If you use zsh and [oh-my-zsh][], you know that having many different plugins that are developed by many different authors in a single (sub)repo is not a very easy to maintain. There are some really fantastic plugins and utilities in oh-my-zsh, but having them all in a single repo doesn't really scale well. And I admire robbyrussell's efforts for reviewing and merging the gigantic number of pull requests the project gets. It needs a better way of plugin management. This was discussed on [a][1] [few][2] [issues][3], but it doesn't look like there was any progress made. So, I'm trying to start this off with antigen, hoping to better this situation. Please note that I'm by no means a zsh or any shell script expert (far from it). [1]: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/issues/465 [2]: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/issues/377 [3]: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/issues/1014 Inspired by vundle, antigen can pull oh-my-zsh style plugins from various github repositories. You are not limited to use plugins from the oh-my-zsh repository only and you don't need to maintain your own fork and pull from upstream every now and then. Antigen also lets you switch the prompt theme with one command, just like that bundle-theme candy and your prompt is changed, just for this session of course. # Commands ## bundle This command tells antigen to install (if not already installed) and load the given plugin. The simplest usage follows the following syntax. bundle This will install the `plugins/` directory from [robbyrussell's oh-my-zsh][oh-my-zsh] (can be changed by setting `ANTIGEN_DEFAULT_REPO_URL`). However, the above is just syntax sugar for the extended syntax of the `bundle` command. bundle [ []] where `` is the repository url and it defaults to [robbyrussell's oh-my-zsh][oh-my-zsh] repo (can be changed by setting `ANTIGEN_DEFAULT_REPO_URL` discussed further down). `` is the path under this repository which has the zsh plugin. This is typically the directory that contains a `*.plugin.zsh` file, but it could contain a completion file or just many `*.zsh` files to be sourced. `` defaults to `/`, which indicates the repository itself is a plugin. An example invocation would be # The following is the same as `bundle ant`. But for demonstration purposes, # we use the extended syntax here. bundle https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git plugins/ant This would install the ant plugin from robbyrussell's oh-my-zsh repo. Of course, github url's can be shortened. bundle robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh plugins/ant And since this repo is the default, even that isn't necessary. But we can't specify the `loc` without giving the first argument. For this and a few other reasons, `bundle` also supports a simple keyword argument syntax, using which we can rewrite the above as bundle --loc=plugins/ant Which picks up the default for the `url` argument, and uses the `loc` given to it. *Note* that you can mix and match positional and keyword arguments. But you can't have positional arguments after keyword arguments. bundle robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh --loc=plugins/ant And keyword arguments don't care about the order in which the arguments are specified. The following is perfectly valid. bundle --loc=plugins/ant --url=robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh In addition to the above discussed arguments, `bundle` also takes a `btype` keyword-only argument, that is used internally. You shouldn't be concerned with this argument, its only used internally and will probably go away in the future. It indicates whether the bundle is a theme or a simple plugin. You can use this `bundle` command not just from your `.zshrc`, but also from your shell environment. This allows you to install plugins on the fly and try them out. Of course if you want a bundle to be available every time you open a shell, put it in your `.zshrc`. ## bundle-update This is something you might not want to put in your `.zshrc`. Instead, run it occasionally to update all your plugins. It doesn't take any arguments. bundle-update Please note that the updates that are downloaded are not immediately available. You have to open a new shell to be able to see the changes. This is a limitation by design since reloading all the plugins *might* have some nasty side effects that may not be immediately apparent. Let's just say it can make your shell act real quirky. ## bundle-list Use this command to list out the currently *loaded* plugins. Keep in mind that this includes any bundles installed on-the-fly. Takes no arguments. Gives out the repo url and the plugin's location under the repo. ## bundle-cleanup Used to clean up the clones of repos which are not used by any plugins. It takes no arguments. When this is run, it lists out the repo-clones that are available but are not used by any plugin *currently loaded*. This command currently cannot run in a non-interactive mode. So it won't be very pleasant to use it in your `.zshrc`. ## bundle-lib This is a shortcut to bundle --loc=lib So, it basically installs the oh-my-zsh's library as a bundle. Please note that this assumes that the `ANTIGEN_DEFAULT_REPO_URL` is set to the oh-my-zsh repo or a fork of that repo. If you want to specify the `url` too, then you can't use the `bundle-lib` short cut. You have to do that directly with the `bundle` command. This is present only for legacy reasons and *might* (or might not) be removed in the future. Use bundle-lib in your `.zshrc`, before any `bundle` declarations. It takes no arguments. ## bundle-theme Used for switching the prompt theme. Invoke it with the name of the theme you want to use. bundle-theme fox Currently, themes are pulled from robbyrussell's oh-my-zsh repo, but it will support getting themes from other repos as well in the future. You can use this command to change your theme on the fly in your shell. Go on, try out a few themes in your shell before you set it in your `.zshrc`. ## bundle-apply You have to add this command after defining all bundles you need, in your zshrc. The completions defined by your bundles will be loaded at this step. It is possible to load completions as and when a bundle is specified with the bundle command, in which case this command would not be necessary. But loading the completions is a time-consuming process and your shell will start noticeably slow if you have a good number of bundle specifications. However, if you're a zsh expert and can suggest a way so that this would not be necessary, I am very interested in discussing it. Please open up an issue with your details. Thanks. # Configuration The following environment variables can be set to customize the behavior of antigen. Make sure you set them *before* source-ing `antigen.zsh`. `ANTIGEN_DEFAULT_REPO_URL` — This is the default repository url that is used for `bundle` commands. The default value is robbyrussell's oh-my-zsh repo, but you can set this to the fork url of your own fork. `ADOTDIR` — This directory is used to store all the repo clones, your bundles, themes, caches and everything else antigen requires to run smoothly. Defaults to `$HOME/.antigen`. **Note**: `ANTIGEN_REPO_CACHE` & `ANTIGEN_BUNDLE_DIR` — These variables were used previously but are now removed. Please use `ADOTDIR` instead, as mentioned above. # Meta Project is licensed with the [MIT License][license]. To contribute, just fork, make changes and send a pull request. If its a rather long/complicated change, please consider opening an [issue][] first so we can discuss it out. Any comments/suggestions/feedback welcome. Please join the discussion on the [reddit page][] of this project. Also, follow me on twitter, [@sharat87](twitter). [Vundle]: https://github.com/gmarik/vundle [oh-my-zsh]: https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh [issue]: https://github.com/sharat87/antigen/issues [license]: http://mit.sharats.me [reddit page]: http://www.reddit.com/r/commandline/comments/u4f26/antigen_a_plugin_manager_for_zsh_shell/ [twitter]: http://twitter.com/sharat87