man aepromptcmd (1): change prompt color by change state

SYNOPSIS

PROMPT_COMMAND="aepromptcmd"

DESCRIPTION

The bash(1) shell has an interesting property: If the PROMPT_COMMAND vaiable is set, the value is executed as a command prior to issuing each primary prompt. (Actually, it can be a seties of semicolon separated commands.)

In order to change the text back to normal, the PS1 variable needs to have "\33[0m" somewhere near the end, otherwise things can get a little difficult to read. If you are using bash(1), you need to let it know these are unprintable (like this: "\[\33[0m\]") or it messes up command line editing.

The aepromptcmd command is used to set the color of the prompt, based on the state of the current change. This is an idea taken from Kent Beck's Test Driven Development book. If the change is in the being developed or being integrated state and it needs to be built, the prompt is red; if it is built but it needs to be tested, the prompt is magenta, otherwise it is green.

Example

Here is a short script you can put in your .bashrc file to turn on prompt coloring:

: if [ "$PS1" ] then
    case "$PROMPT_COMMAND" in
    "" )         PROMPT_COMMAND="aepromptcmd"
        PS1="$PS1^[[0m"
        ;;

    *aepromptcmd*)         ;;

    *)         PROMPT_COMMAND="$PROMPT_COMMAND;aepromptcmd"
        PS1="$PS1\[\33[0m\]"
        ;;

    esac
    export PROMPT_COMMAND
    export PS1 fi

Note that this usually leaves your prompt default (black) when you are not somewhere inside a development directory.

Limitations

The aepromptcmd command uses the ANSI color escape sequences. It really should to use the tigetstr(3) function from terminfo(3) to do this in a terminal independent way. Code contributions welcome.

OPTIONS

The following options are understood:

-Change number: This option may be used to specify a particular change within a project. See aegis(1) for a complete description of this option.
-Project name: This option may be used to select the project of interest. When no -Project option is specified, the AEGIS_PROJECT environment variable is consulted. If that does not exist, the user's $HOME/.aegisrc file is examined for a default project field (see aeuconf(5) for more information). If that does not exist, when the user is only working on changes within a single project, the project name defaults to that project. Otherwise, it is an error.
-Help: This option may be used to obtain more information about how to use the aepromptcmd program.
-Verbose: By default error messages are supressed, so that the prompt will be normal when you are outside an Aegis work area. Use this option to tuen error messages back on.

See also aepromptcmd(1) for options common to all aepromptcmd commands.

All options may be abbreviated; the abbreviation is documented as the upper case letters, all lower case letters and underscores (_) are optional. You must use consecutive sequences of optional letters.

All options are case insensitive, you may type them in upper case or lower case or a combination of both, case is not important.

For example: the arguments "-project, "-PROJ" and "-p" are all interpreted to mean the -Project option. The argument "-prj" will not be understood, because consecutive optional characters were not supplied.

Options and other command line arguments may be mixed arbitrarily on the command line, after the function selectors.

The GNU long option names are understood. Since all option names for aepromptcmd are long, this means ignoring the extra leading '-'. The "--option=value" convention is also understood.

EXIT STATUS

The aepromptcmd command will exit with a status of 1 on any error. The aepromptcmd command will only exit with a status of 0 if there are no errors.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

See aegis(1) for a list of environment variables which may affect this command. See aepconf(5) for the project configuration file's project_specific field for how to set environment variables for all commands executed by Aegis.

COPYRIGHT

The aepromptcmd program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details use the 'aepromptcmd -VERSion License' command. This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; for details use the 'aepromptcmd -VERSion License' command.

AUTHOR

Peter Miller	E-Mail:	[email protected]
`/\/\*`	WWW:	http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~millerp/