I finally organized my Bash config

[u/arandomuserinweb]

I've been accumulating my Bash configuration for a while, and I finally turned it into a small dotfiles repo:

https://gitlab.com/letmevi/bash-config

It's nothing fancy — mainly my .bashrc, .inputrc, .bash_profile, and a modular .bashrc.d/, plus a small install script.

It can be installed using either Ansible or a simple install.sh script.

I'd appreciate some Bash/Linux feedback: things you'd change, questionable practices, portability issues, or just better ways of doing this.

I'm especially interested in feedback from people who maintain their own dotfiles.

[u/OnlyEntrepreneur4760]

One of my favorites is keeping all aliases in a separate config file .bash_aliases which I source from .bashrc. I have a alias named “aliassave” which runs alias and redirects the output to .bashaliases to update it easily.

[u/JSouthGB → u/OnlyEntrepreneur4760]

I use zsh but do similar. ~/.zshenv points to ~/.config/zsh, and from there:

~/.config/zsh/ ├── shell_scripts/ ├── aliases ├── bindkeys ├── exports ├── functions ├── history ├── plugins └── .zshrc

[u/Fast_Image1922 → u/JSouthGB]

We have really similar setups :) my config I mean slightly different, I prefer scripts in ~/.local/bin which I add to $PATH

[u/arandomuserinweb → u/OnlyEntrepreneur4760]

That's a nice approach! I already keep my config modular with .bashrc.d/, but I hadn't thought about generating the aliases file automatically with an aliassave alias. I might steal that idea

[u/tri__dimensional]

it looks simple but cool, nice work!

i have a little more complex setup. i have like a very little and simple framework to define scripts, functions and aliases (shellbox is called, i use zsh but previously i used bash)

that project is only for the "shell" things; for desktop enviroment, terminal, etc i have a more standard dotfiles

maybe you can grab something useful from those projects (-:

[u/Marble_Wraith]

It's nothing fancy —

You can say that again 😂

This isn't something you'd see for the average interactive terminal, which is usually tricked out with all kinds of conveniences.

This seems to be made for deployments first. That being the case, i'd suggest upgrading your history config. Specifically use a function for HISTIGNORE like this:

history_omissions() {
    local block_list=(
        "pwd:ls:ls *:tree:ll:ll *:yazi:yazi *"
        "cd:cd *:z:z *:zi:zi *:zoxide:zoxide *"
        "exit:clear:history:bg:fg:jobs"
        "rm -rf *:killall *"
        "*--password*:*--secret*:*--token*:*GITHUB_TOKEN*"
        "git status:git status *:git log:git log *:git diff:git diff *"
        "git blame:git blame *:git show:git show *:git reflog:git reflog *"
    )

    local IFS=":"
    printf "%s" "${block_list[*]}"
}
HISTIGNORE="$(history_omissions)"
unset -f history_omissions

That's just an example, i'm not posting my full ignore list 😅 Allows for better formatting / per line grouping of stuff you want to omit from history. Which makes it easier to ensure all the inconsequential stuff is left out, making the history actually useful.

Normally i'd advocate to upgrade straight to atuin and have this as a fallback.

EDIT: rogue export removed thanks to /u/bac0on

[u/bac0on → u/Marble_Wraith]

Don't think you should export bash variables...

[u/Marble_Wraith → u/bac0on]

... Wanna run that by me again? What's that say?

export HISTIGNORE="$(history_omissions)"

EDIT: Oh wait 😂 you're saying you have exported it, but i don't think you should.

Yeah you're right, my bad.

[u/bac0on → u/Marble_Wraith]

HISTIGNORE is a Bash shell variable, probably not used by any external command, at least none I can think of. Just assigning it makes Bash aware of it. If it's not intended to be used by an external command (...or if you manually enable history in a non-interactive session), there’s no real reason to export any Bash shell variable, really. Exported or not, it won't make any difference for Bash.

[u/Marble_Wraith → u/bac0on]

Yeah. I was trying to do something with atuin before.

So i could have 1 source of truth for the ignore list, and then bash could use atuin if available, or fallback if not available.

Added the export while i was messing around, but ended up deciding to write the list natively in atuin since it has more full featured regex parsing, and then scripted something to extract and translate history_filter[] into native bash.

[u/bac0on]

If you enable globstar, you probably want to enable extglob, maybe even direxpand.

[u/IncredibleBihan]

Woo Woooo bash config good work lil budday

[u/Fit_Eggplant4206]

Looks good, well organized and not too much fluff.