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The goal of this project is to make Darwin more usable by providing an installation ISO, documentation, and add-on software. You are welcome to join #puredarwin on irc.freenode.net if you would like to join PureDarwin development and to add to this site.

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The Z shell

This page is about using zsh on PureDarwin system.
Normally, PureDarwin comes with the bash shell which most users will be familiar with.
Some users might prefer to use zsh however. This page is a work in progress, please feel free to contribute.

Availability

In PureDarwin

Available.

In the DarwinBuild project

Available.
See the DarwinBuild page on how to compile a project if needed.

In the MacPorts project

Available.
Take a look at Using the MacPorts project page for more information about MacPorts if you don't know how to build it.

Note: You should also take a look in the available variants (you can use port info zsh or port variants zsh if you want to know the description associated to the respective variant).
The zsh port appears to be "pure" as shown below.

Changing an user's default shell

To use zsh as the default shell of the currently logged-in user, do
chsh -s /bin/zsh
To revert back to bash, do 
chsh -s /bin/bash

zshrc

Populate your ~/.zshrc (or /etc/zshrc) with:

export PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/libexec:/System/Library/CoreServices
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
export PATH=/usr/X11R6/bin:$PATH
export EDITOR=/usr/bin/vi
alias ll='ls -lh'
PS1='%n@%m:%~%# '
TERM='vt100'
bindkey -e
  • Some PATH could be optional, depending the flavor.
  • PS1 sets the prompt like user@PureDarwin:~% in your home dir and user@PureDarwin:/tmp% in the well-known temporary folder.
  • TERM variable could be 'ansi' or per example 'xterm-color'.
  • the bindkey -e command allows you to use emac style for ^A, ^E, and ^D shortcut (how paradoxal since the EDITOR is vi? ;)).
Note: zsh is the only shell we know that it is able to run in interactive mode without (or with a broken) standard input.

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