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Customize Powershell Prompt Message

At work, I use [PowerShell] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell) a lot, mostly for Git commands. By default, the powershell prompt message shows you the full path of the current working directory. i.e. something like this;

PS C:\vraa\workspace

Which is fine, but I'd like this prompt to be short and informative. In short, I'd want the prompt to:

  • Show only the folder name, instead of full path.
  • Show the current branch name if inside a Git repo.

Powershell provides an option to customize its behavior. You can write your customization, in terms of functions, and keep them in your $PROFILE file. So, in order to achive my requirement, I used following function.

  1. In Powershell, type notepad.exe $PROFILE.
  2. Add following function there.
function prompt{
  $p = Split-Path (
     Get-Location
     ) -Leaf
  
  git branch | foreach{
    if($_ -match "^\*(.*)"){
     $p += " [" + $matches[1] + " ] "
    }
  }
  
  $p = $p + ">"
  Write-Host $p -NoNewline -ForegroundColor Green
  return " "
}

Be sure to keep the function name as prompt. Save and restart Powershell.

After the above customization, when you are in a normal folder, Powershell prompt will look like this:

foldername>

And, when inside a Git repo, the prompt message will look like:

gitrepo [ master ] >

Thanks to [this] (http://techblogging.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/displaying-git-branch-on-your-powershell-prompt/) for the script to detect current Git branch name.

So, what is your [Powershell customization] (https://veerasundar.com/blog/using-multiple-versions-of-jdk-and-eclipse-in-single-machine/)?

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