Don’t use vcs_info at all (even though it’s in your prompt):
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable NONE
Disable the backends for bzr and svk:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr svk
Disable everything but bzr and svk:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable bzr svk
Provide a special formats for git:
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' formats ' GIT, BABY! [%b]' zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' actionformats ' GIT ACTION! [%b|%a]'
All %x expansion in all sorts of formats (formats, actionformats,
branchformat, you name it) are done using the ‘zformat’ builtin from
the ‘zsh/zutil’ module. That means you can do everything with these
%x items what zformat supports. In particular, if you want something
that is really long to have a fixed width, like a hash in a mercurial
branchformat, you can do this: %12.12i. That’ll shrink the 40 character
hash to its 12 leading characters. The form is actually
‘%min.maxx’. More is possible.
See The zsh/zutil Module for details.
Use the quicker bzr backend
zstyle ':vcs_info:bzr:*' use-simple true
If you do use use-simple, please report if it does ‘the-right-thing[tm]’.
Display the revision number in yellow for bzr and svn:
zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%%F{yellow}:%r'
The doubled percent sign is explained in Oddities.
Alternatively, one can use the raw colour codes directly:
zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%{'${fg[yellow]}'%}:%r'
Normally when a variable is interpolated into a format string, the variable
needs to be %-escaped. In this example we skipped that because we assume
the value of ${fg[yellow]} doesn’t contain any % signs.
Make sure you enclose the color codes in %{...%}
if you want to use the string provided by vcs_info in prompts.
Here is how to print the VCS information as a command (not in a prompt):
vcsi() { vcs_info interactive; vcs_info_lastmsg }
This way, you can even define different formats for output via
vcs_info_lastmsg in the ’:vcs_info:*:interactive:*’ namespace.
Now as promised, some code that uses hooks:
say, you’d like to replace the string ‘svn’ by ‘subversion’ in
vcs_info’s %s formats replacement.
First, we will tell vcs_info to call a function when populating
the message variables with the gathered information:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
Nothing happens. Which is reasonable, since we didn’t define the actual
function yet. To see what the hooks subsystem is trying to do, enable the
‘debug’ style:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug true
That should give you an idea what is going on. Specifically, the function
that we are looking for is ‘+vi-svn2subversion’. Note, the ‘+vi-’
prefix. So, everything is in order, just as documented. When you are done
checking out the debugging output, disable it again:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug false
Now, let’s define the function:
function +vi-svn2subversion() {
[[ ${hook_com[vcs_orig]} == svn ]] && hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}
Simple enough. And it could have even been simpler, if only we had
registered our function in a less generic context. If we do it only in
the ‘svn’ backend’s context, we don’t need to test which the active
backend is:
zstyle ':vcs_info:svn+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
function +vi-svn2subversion() {
hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}
And finally a little more elaborate example, that uses a hook to create
a customised bookmark string for the hg backend.
Again, we start off by registering a function:
zstyle ':vcs_info:hg+gen-hg-bookmark-string:*' hooks hgbookmarks
And then we define the ‘+vi-hgbookmarks’ function:
function +vi-hgbookmarks() {
# The default is to connect all bookmark names by
# commas. This mixes things up a little.
# Imagine, there's one type of bookmarks that is
# special to you. Say, because it's *your* work.
# Those bookmarks look always like this: "sh/*"
# (because your initials are sh, for example).
# This makes the bookmarks string use only those
# bookmarks. If there's more than one, it
# concatenates them using commas.
# The bookmarks returned by `hg' are available in
# the function's positional parameters.
local s="${(Mj:,:)@:#sh/*}"
# Now, the communication with the code that calls
# the hook functions is done via the hook_com[]
# hash. The key at which the `gen-hg-bookmark-string'
# hook looks is `hg-bookmark-string'. So:
hook_com[hg-bookmark-string]=$s
# And to signal that we want to use the string we
# just generated, set the special variable `ret' to
# something other than the default zero:
ret=1
return 0
}
Some longer examples and code snippets which might be useful are available in the examples file located at Misc/vcs_info-examples in the Zsh source directory.
This concludes our guided tour through zsh’s vcs_info.