Simple Bash Git Prompt: Always Know Your Current Branch

This guide adds a minimal, colorful prompt to your Bash terminal in Ubuntu/WSL that shows the current Git branch.

• Introduction
• 🛠️ Simple Bash Git Prompt Setup
  • 1. Open your .bashrc file
  • 2. Paste the custom code
  • 3. Save and Reload
• Advanced Config: Displaying the Git Branch State
  • Visual Feedback and Functionality
  • The Code: Git Status via PROMPT_COMMAND
  • Save and Reload
• Final Thoughts

Introduction

As an infrastructure specialist constantly dealing with various environments and repositories—especially when using Terraform or Ansible to manage cloud infrastructure—it’s incredibly easy to lose track of which Git branch you’re currently operating in. We’ve all been there: accidentally committing to main instead of a feature branch, or trying to pull from a branch that doesn’t exist locally.

For someone like me, who values automation and a smooth workflow to reduce operational overhead, this cognitive slip-up is a huge productivity killer.

A simple, colorful Git prompt in your terminal is a game-changer. It gives instant visual feedback, helping you avoid mistakes and keep your development or infrastructure-as-code repos perfectly in sync.

Here is the quick guide to setting up a minimal, colorful prompt in your Bash terminal (Ubuntu/WSL) that clearly displays the current Git branch.

🛠️ Simple Bash Git Prompt Setup

1. Open your .bashrc file

In your terminal, run the following command to open your Bash configuration file for editing:

nano ~/.bashrc

2. Paste the custom code

Scroll to the very bottom of the file and paste this entire code block. This code block defines a function to grab the branch name and then sets the PS1 variable to include colored components, including the output of the new function.

# --- Custom Git Prompt ---

# Function to get git branch name
parse_git_branch() {
  local branch=$(git branch --show-current 2> /dev/null)
  if [ -n "$branch" ]; then
    echo " (${branch})" # Note the space and parentheses
  fi
}

# Define color codes
COLOR_RESET='\[\033[00m\]' # Resets all colors and effects
COLOR_USER='\[\033[01;36m\]' # Bold Cyan
COLOR_HOST='\[\033[00;36m\]' # Cyan
COLOR_DIR='\[\033[01;33m\]'  # Bold Yellow
COLOR_GIT='\[\033[00;32m\]'  # Green - Highlight the branch name!

# Build the prompt: [user]@[host]:[directory] (git-branch-name)$
export PS1="${COLOR_USER}\u${COLOR_HOST}@\h${COLOR_RESET}:${COLOR_DIR}\w${COLOR_GIT}\$(parse_git_branch)${COLOR_RESET}\$ "

# --- End Custom Git Prompt ---

3. Save and Reload

Follow these steps to save the changes to your .bashrc file:

• Press Ctrl+X to exit the nano editor.
• Press Y to confirm you want to save.
• Press Enter to confirm the file name (.bashrc).

Finally, reload your terminal configuration for the changes to take effect immediately:

source ~/.bashrc

Now, when you navigate into a Git-initialized directory, you’ll see the branch name clearly displayed in green, right before the command prompt! If it’s not a Git directory your prompt will work just like before.

Advanced Config: Displaying the Git Branch State

The simple prompt introduced earlier is great, but to truly reduce errors and boost productivity, we need the terminal to reflect the state of the Git repository—not just the branch name. This “advanced” configuration uses color coding to give you immediate visual feedback on whether you have uncommitted changes.

This is a critical improvement for managing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with tools like Terraform, ensuring you don’t accidentally commit half-finished changes.

Visual Feedback and Functionality

The key benefit of this advanced setup is the immediate color-coded status of your active branch. You can tell your repo’s state at a glance:

Git Status	Colour	Meaning
Clean/Synced	Green	The repository is clean. All changes are committed and pushed (or ready to be pushed). You are safe to switch branches or pull updates.
Staged	Yellow	Files have been staged (git add) but not yet committed (git commit). You are ready for a commit.
Dirty/Uncommitted	Red	You have unstaged changes (files modified or newly created). This is a strong visual warning to save, stage, or discard your work before proceeding.

This dynamic visual confirmation improves your workflow and drastically reduces the chance of making accidental commits, helping you maintain a clean and reliable codebase.

The Code: Git Status via PROMPT_COMMAND

Replace the previous Git prompt code block in your ~/.bashrc file with this more powerful configuration. It uses a dynamic function run via PROMPT_COMMAND to check the repository status before every prompt:

# --- Custom Git Prompt (Final Version) ---

# This function is called before each prompt
_build_my_prompt() {
    # 1. Define colors (raw codes, without wrappers)
    local C_RESET='\033[00m'
    local C_USER='\033[00;36m'     # Cyan
    local C_HOST='\033[00;36m'     # Cyan
    local C_DIR='\033[01;36m'      # Bold Cyan
    local C_GREEN='\033[00;32m'    # Green
    local C_RED='\033[00;31m'      # Red
    local C_YELLOW='\033[00;33m'   # Yellow

    # 2. Build the main prompt part (user, host, dir)
    #    We add the \[...\] wrappers here
    local prompt_start="\[${C_USER}\]\u\[${C_HOST}\]@\h\[${C_RESET}\]:\[${C_DIR}\]\w\[${C_RESET}\]"

    # 3. Build the git part
    local git_info=""
    local branch=$(git branch --show-current 2> /dev/null)

    if [ -n "$branch" ]; then
        local color=$C_GREEN # Default to green (in sync)

        # Check for uncommitted files (dirty)
        if ! git diff-files --quiet 2> /dev/null; then
            color=$C_RED
        # Check for staged files
        elif ! git diff-index --cached --quiet HEAD 2> /dev/null; then
            color=$C_YELLOW
        fi

        # Add wrappers *around* the color
        git_info=" (\[${color}\]$branch\[${C_RESET}\])"
    fi

    # 4. Set the final PS1 string
    PS1="${prompt_start}${git_info} \$ "
}

# Tell Bash to run this function before each prompt
export PROMPT_COMMAND="_build_my_prompt"

# --- End Custom Git Prompt ---

Save and Reload

Remember to save the changes to your .bashrc file:

• Press Ctrl+X to exit the nano editor.
• Press Y to confirm you want to save.
• Press Enter to confirm the file name (.bashrc).

Finally, reload your terminal configuration for the changes to take effect immediately:

source ~/.bashrc

Final Thoughts

It’s the small, simple quality-of-life automations like this that truly compound to create a more efficient and less error-prone work environment.

Happy automating!