ZSH on Windows (git bash)

So… is it really possible?

Well, yeah. But it requires some work.
The resources I used (linked at the bottom) are a bit outdated, so here is the updated version

Edit: Maybe steps 1-3 are not needed anymore

There is an alternative that I just discovered (but didn’t test as I had the whole setup ready).
Get the latest RubyInstaller. It will install ruby and MSYS2 and it will configure pacman and other things for you. Potentially ;)

1. install msys2 and follow this

1. I didn’t follow it fully - it was hard to copy those files on windows. What worked for me was just copy-pasting things that returned as errors when running the commands below

2. run the following:

mkdir -p /var/lib/pacman
pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate msys2
pacman -Syu

3. then run this:

URL=https://github.com/git-for-windows/git-sdk-64/raw/main
cat /etc/package-versions.txt | while read p v; do d=/var/lib/pacman/local/$p-$v;
 mkdir -p $d; echo $d; for f in desc files install mtree; do curl -sSL --ssl-no-revoke "$URL$d/$f" -o $d/$f;
 done; done

4. And finally:

pacman -S zsh

You can verify that it works (just run zsh in your bash). And if it does…

5. Add this at the end of .bashrc

bash -c zsh

Now that we have ZSH - we can configure it

1. install nerd fonts

and configure them (quote from source 1 below)

Change Windows Terminal settings to use Nerd-Fonts Because we want Windows Terminal to be able to render the icons in the powerlevel10k theme correctly, we need to change the Windows Terminal configuration to use the Nerd-Font we’ve downloaded before. Click on Settings in the Windows Terminal menu and edit the settings.json file with your favorite text editor.

Find your wsl or wsl2 profile and add the line “fontFace”: “".

2. update ssh

go to ~/.ssh/config and add AddKeysToAgent yes to all entries

3. install plugins

choco install bat

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
git clone https://github.com/MichaelAquilina/zsh-you-should-use.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/you-should-use
git clone https://github.com/fdellwing/zsh-bat.git $ZSH_CUSTOM/plugins/zsh-bat

4. configure ~/.zshrc

(...)
ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k"
(...)
HIST_STAMPS="mm/dd/yyyy"
(...)
plugins=(git ssh-agent zsh-autosuggestions you-should-use zsh-bat)
(...)
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi
source ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting/zsh-syntax-highlighting.zsh

And that’s it

The next time you run - oh-my-zsk will take you through the configuration, which is a pretty straight-forward process. Now you can brag to your friends that you have a more colorful terminal. yay ;)

tips and tricks

• if you have some errors that cannot find stuff in /home/<USERNAME>/<whatever> - replace ~ in your scripts with a path like /c/Users/<USERNAME>/<whatever>
• you may need to add --ssl-no-revoke in curls (in case you use something I didn’t update)
• you can share ~/.bash_aliases between .bashrc and .zshrc - the paths will be the same
• if you see some git problems (like unauthorized, access denied, etc) - add the following lines towards the end of ~/.zshrc:

  ssh-add /c/Users/<USERNAME>/.ssh/id_github &> /dev/null
  

• if you see Command not found compdef before running powerlevel10k - edit .zshrc and put this on top:

  autoload -Uz compinit
  compinit
  

sources:

1. Using zsh on Windows
2. videos/windows-terminal-powerlevel10k at main · ChristianLempa/videos
3. The Only 5 Zsh Plugins You Need
4. Command not found compdef