(Nu)Shell

Required

Optional

Before we proceed further, I will quickly install my shell next, so I don’t go insane from using bash. Of course, you can use any shell you want. In my case, I’ll be using nushell.

I am using nu because of its nice functionality^{read: I use rust btw}.

Install missing tools

To properly utilize my nu setup, I need to have the following tools available

carapace-bin (command completer),
starship (prompt),
zoxide (smarter cd)

Special case for WezTerm

I’m using the terminal emulator WezTerm to run WSL. There is a weird behaviour however with nushell, where a \n gets inserted above the prompt on every keystroke.

If you look inside ~/.config/nushell/config.nu

240
    shell_integration: {
8 collapsed lines
241
        # osc2 abbreviates the path if in the home_dir, sets the tab/window title, shows the running command in the tab/window title
242
        osc2: true
243
        # osc7 is a way to communicate the path to the terminal, this is helpful for spawning new tabs in the same directory
244
        osc7: true
245
        # osc8 is also implemented as the deprecated setting ls.show_clickable_links, it shows clickable links in ls output if your terminal supports it. show_clickable_links is deprecated in favor of osc8
246
        osc8: true
247
        # osc9_9 is from ConEmu and is starting to get wider support. It's similar to osc7 in that it communicates the path to the terminal
248
        osc9_9: false
249
        # osc133 is several escapes invented by Final Term which include the supported ones below.
250
        # 133;A - Mark prompt start
251
        # 133;B - Mark prompt end
252
        # 133;C - Mark pre-execution
253
        # 133;D;exit - Mark execution finished with exit code
254
        # This is used to enable terminals to know where the prompt is, the command is, where the command finishes, and where the output of the command is
255
        osc133: ("WEZTERM_PANE" not-in $env)
11 collapsed lines
256
        # osc633 is closely related to osc133 but only exists in visual studio code (vscode) and supports their shell integration features
257
        # 633;A - Mark prompt start
258
        # 633;B - Mark prompt end
259
        # 633;C - Mark pre-execution
260
        # 633;D;exit - Mark execution finished with exit code
261
        # 633;E - NOT IMPLEMENTED - Explicitly set the command line with an optional nonce
262
        # 633;P;Cwd=<path> - Mark the current working directory and communicate it to the terminal
263
        # and also helps with the run recent menu in vscode
264
        osc633: true
265
        # reset_application_mode is escape \x1b[?1l and was added to help ssh work better
266
        reset_application_mode: true
267
    }

osc133 is disabled while using WezTerm, mitigating the aformentioned issue.

This works flawlessly in windows, but unfortunately wezterm_pane isn’t automatically set within wsl.

To hack this, i just added an export to my ~/.bashrc

export wezterm_pane=0

Set it as default

If you remember correctly, we set the login shell to bash when creating the custom user, so you might wonder why we didn’t directly set it to nu.

Well nushell isn’t POSIX compliant, and neither does it want to be. Therefore running nu as a login shell might not be the absolute best experience you’ll ever have.

Instead, we populate the .bashrc with some scripting that will let nu take over any interactive shell, while scripts, etc. that expect a POSIX compliant shell can have their way.

if [[ $- == *i* && $(ps --no-header --pid $PPID --format comm) != "nu" && -z ${BASH_EXECUTION_STRING} ]] then
  exec nu
fi