Zsh
Zsh (Z shell) is an interactive login shell that can also be used as a powerful scripting language interpreter. It is similar to bash and the Korn shell, but offers extensive configurability, powerful commandline completion, file globbing, and spelling correction.
Installation
Install app-shells/zsh:
| USE flag | Default | Recommended | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| caps | No | Use Linux capabilities library to control privilege | |
| debug | No | No | Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/backtraces.xml |
| doc | No | Adds extra documentation (API, Javadoc, etc). It is recommended to enable per package instead of globally | |
| examples | No | Yes | Install examples, usually source code |
| gdbm | No | Adds support for sys-libs/gdbm (GNU database libraries) | |
| maildir | No | Adds support for maildir (~/.maildir) style mail spools | |
| pcre | No | Adds support for Perl Compatible Regular Expressions | |
| static | No | !!do not set this during bootstrap!! Causes binaries to be statically linked instead of dynamically | |
| unicode | No | Yes | Adds support for Unicode |
root # emerge --ask zshAlso install app-shells/zsh-completion, which is optional, but enables auto-completion for arguments of commands, which is one of the strengths of Zsh:
root # emerge --ask zsh-completionConfiguration
Upon running Zsh for the first time as a new user, you will be greeted by a basic configuration dialog. You can skip this by pressing q to configure Zsh manually.
To make Zsh your default shell, you can run:
user $ chsh -s /bin/zshZsh's main configuration file is ~/.zshrc and you can reload this configuration in a running shell with:
user $ source ~/.zshrc
