fisher/man/man7/fisher.md

fisher(7) -- An Introduction to Fisherman

DESCRIPTION

Fisherman is a plugin manager for fish(1) that lets you share and reuse code, prompts and configurations easily.

Some features include: minimalistic design, flat tree structure, unified plugin architecture, external self-managed database, cache system, dependency manifest file and compatibility with oh-my-fish and other frameworks.

This document describes Fisherman features and some of their implementation details. For usage and command help see also fisher(1).

FLAT TREE

The configuration directory structure is optimized to help fish start new sessions as quickly as possible, regardless of the numbers of plugins or prompts enabled at any given time.

To explain how this is possible, we need to make a digression and discuss function scope first. In fish, all functions share the same scope and you can use only one name per function.

In the following example:

function foo
    echo $_
    function bar
    end
end

function bar
    echo $_
end

foo and bar are available immediately at the command line prompt and both print their names. But there is a catch, calling foo at least once will create a new bar function, effectively erasing the previous bar definition. Subsequent calls to bar will print nothing.

By convention, functions that start with any number of underscores are intentionally private, but there is no mechanism that prevents you from calling them at any time once loaded.

With this in mind, it's possible to improve the slow shell start problem using a flat tree structure whose path is loaded only once.

The overhead of juggling multiple path hierarchies in a per-plugin basis yields no benefits as everything is shared in the same scope.

Loading a path simply means adding the desired location to the $fish_function_path array. See also functions(1).

Here is a snapshot of a typical configuration path with a single plugin and prompt:

$fisher_config
|-- cache/
|-- conf.d/
|-- |-- my_plugin.config.fish
|-- functions/
|   |-- my_plugin.fish
|   |-- fish_prompt.fish
|   |-- fish_right_prompt.fish
|-- completions/
|   |-- my_plugin.fish
|-- man/
    |-- man1/
        |-- my_plugin.1

If you are already familiar in the way fish handles your user configuration, you will find the above structure similar to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fish. See Initialization Files in help fish to learn more about fish configuration.

conf.d, short for configuration directory, is used for initialization files, i.e., files that should run at the start of the shell. Files that follow the naming convention <name>.config.fish are added there.

PLUGINS

Plugins are components that extend and add features to your shell. To see what plugins are available use fisher search. You can also type fisher install and hit tab once to get full name completions and plugin information. The same works for fisher update and fisher uninstall.

To learn how to create plugins, see fisher help plugins.

To install a plugin, you can use their name if they are listed in $fisher_index.

fisher install shark

Otherwise, you can use the repository remote URL.

fisher install simnalamburt/shellder

If the domain or host is not provided, Fisherman will use any value in $fisher_default_host. The default value is https://github.com.

In addition, all of the following owner/repo variations are accepted:

• owner/repo > https://github.com/owner/repo
  
• github/owner/repo > https://github.com/owner/repo
  
• gh/owner/repo > https://github.com/owner/repo
  

Shortcuts to other common Git repository hosting services are also available:

• bb/owner/repo > https://bitbucket.org/owner/repo
  
• gl/owner/repo > https://gitlab.com/owner/repo
  
• omf/owner/repo > https://github.com/oh-my-fish/repo
  

Because of Fisherman's flat tree model, there is no technical distinction between plugins or prompts. Installing a prompt is equivalent to switching themes in other systems. The interface is always install, update or uninstall.

Throughout this document and other Fisherman manuals you will find the term prompt when referring to the concept of a theme, i.e., a plugin that defines a fish_prompt and / or fish_right_prompt functions.

INDEX

You can install, update and uninstall plugins by name, querying the Fisherman index, or by URL using several of the variations described in Plugins. The index is a plain text flat database independent from Fisherman. You can use a custom index file by setting $fisher_index to your own file or URL. Redirection urls are not supported due to security and performance concerns. See fisher help config.

A copy of the index is downloaded each time a query happens. This keeps the index up to date and allows you to search the database offline.

The index is a list of records, each consisting of the following fields:

• name, url, info, author and one or more tags.

Fields are separated by a new line '\n'. Tags are separated by one space. Here is a sample record:

shark
https://github.com/bucaran/shark
Sparklines for your Fish
graph spark data
bucaran

To submit a new plugin for registration install the submit plugin:

fisher install submit

For usage see the bundled documentation fisher help submit.

You can also submit a new plugin manually and create a pull request.

git clone https://github.com/fisherman/fisher-index
cd index
echo "$name\n$URL\n$info\n$author\n$tags\n\n" >> index
git push origin master
open http://github.com

Now you can create a new pull request in the upstream repository.

CACHE

Downloaded plugins are tracked as Git repositories under $fisher_cache. See fisher help config to find out about other Fisherman configuration variables.

When you install or uninstall a plugin, Fisherman downloads the repository to the cache and copies only the relevant files from the cache to the loaded function and / or completion path. In addition, man pages are added to the corresponding man directory and if a Makefile is detected, the command make is run.

The cache also provides a location for a local copy of the Index.

FISHFILES

Dependency manifest file, or fishfiles for short, let you share plugin configurations across multiple installations, allow plugins to declare dependencies, and prevent information loss in case of system failure. See fisher help fishfile.

Here is an example fishfile inside $fisher_config:

# my plugins
gitio
fishtape

# my links
github/bucaran/shark

The fishfile updates as you install / uninstall plugins. See also fisher help install or fisher help uninstall.

Plugins may list any number of dependencies to other plugins in a fishfile at the root of each project. By default, when Fisherman installs a plugin, it will also fetch and install its dependencies. If a dependency is already installed, it will not be updated as this could potentially break other plugins using an older version. For the same reasons, uninstalling a plugin does not remove its dependencies. See fisher help update.

CONFIGURATION

Fisherman allows a high level of configuration using $fisher_* variables. You can customize the home and configuration directories, debug log file, cache location, index source URL, command aliases, etc. See fisher help config.

You can also extend Fisherman by adding new commands and ship them as plugins as well. Fisherman automatically adds completions to commands based in the function description and usage help if provided. See fisher help help and fisher help commands.

To add completions to standalone utility plugins, use complete(1).

CLI

If you are already familiar with other UNIX tools, you'll find Fisherman commands behave intuitively.

Most commands read the standard input by default when no options are given and produce easy to parse output, making Fisherman commands ideal for plumbing and building upon each other.

Fisherman also ships with a CLI options parser and a background job wait spinner that you can use to implement your own commands CLI. See getopts(1) and wait(1).

COMPATIBILITY

Fisherman supports oh-my-fish (Wahoo) themes and plugins by default, but some features are turned off due to performance considerations.

oh-my-fish evaluates every .fish file inside the root directory of every plugin during initialization. This is necessary in order to register any existing init events and invoke them using fish emit(1).

Since it is not possible to determine whether a file defines an initialization event without evaluating its contents first, oh-my-fish sources all *.fish files and then emits events for each plugin.

Not all plugins opt in the initialization mechanism, therefore support for this behavior is turned off by default. If you would like Fisherman to behave like oh-my-fish at the start of every session, install the omf compatibility plugin.

fisher install omf

This plugin also adds definitions for some of oh-my-fish Core Library functions.

SEE ALSO

fisher(1)
fisher help
fisher help config
fisher help plugins
fisher help commands
wait(1)
getopts(1)