In this video, we will be learning how to customize our terminal with dotfiles. In a previous video we learned about the difference between the .bash_profile and .bashrc files. And in this video we will be customizing those files in order to add color and information to our command prompt. In our next video we will be putting all of this together and exploring the real power of dotfiles, but before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s customize our prompt:
In the next few videos, we will be taking a look at how to customize our terminal with dotfiles. First, we need to understand the main dotfiles we will be working with, the .bashrc and .bash_profile files. What is the difference between these files and which one should you modify in order to customize your terminal? Let find out:
In this video, we will be learning basic terminal commands which will allow us to create, copy, rename, move, and delete file and directories. These commands include: touch, mkdir, cp, mv, rm, as well as exploring some options we can use with these commands. Let’s get started:
The Terminal can be an intimidating place for people who are just beginning to learn how to use it. There is a fear that you will type the wrong command and somehow mess everything up.
In this video, we will begin learning how to use the Terminal by navigating through your filesystem. This is a great way to get comfortable within your terminal, because the commands we will be learning won’t have any side-effects on your system. You can’t accidentally delete files or modify important documents. Learning these basics will provide us with a great starting point for more advanced commands. Let’s get started:
Running a local web-server to test a simple website is usually way harder than it has to be. In this video, we will look at a quick and simple way to run a local web-server without needing to download or configure anything. All you need is python (If you are on Mac or Linux, this is likely already installed). We will be using python’s SimpleHTTPServer. It’s literally as simple as navigating to your website folder and running the server. Let’s get started.
Command to run python’s SimpleHTTPServer on port 8000:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000Git is the most popular version control system out there and for good reason. In this video, we’ll go over the basics of what git is and how to use it within the command-line. There are several GUI tools out there to help you get started with git, but it can be extremely beneficial to learn git from the command-line as early as possible. Let’s get started.
A big hurdle a lot of people face when learning to use the terminal is the fact that it feels slow compared to navigating around in Finder or other GUIs. Using the terminal doesn’t have to feel slow. Once you learn a few keyboard shortcuts, it can greatly increase the speed at which you can navigate and run commands within the command line.
In this video we’ll be going over some of the keyboard shortcuts I use on a daily basis.
If you navigate from your terminal frequently, you have most likely run into the scenario where you are within a project directory and want to open a file or folder from that project. It is a pain to open up Finder, navigate to the project, and open the file or directory that way. Being able to open these projects and files from the terminal is much more convenient and saves a lot of time. In this video we’ll look at how we can do just that:
The line that links the “subl” command to /usr/local/bin/ is as follows:
ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/sublOne problem I run into frequently is needing to resize multiple images at once. To do this manually would take way too much time, especially if you have a lot of images.
Luckily, there are several good tools out the to automate this process for us. In this video we will be resizing multiple images using the Mac Terminal and the built-in “sips” command.
If you are someone who is more comfortable using an application rather than the terminal, I also have a video on resizing multiple images using Google’s Picasa. You can find that video here. With that said, in this video we will be focusing on the Mac Terminal. Let’s get started:
In this quick tip, we’re going to look at how to create aliases for common terminal commands. If you find yourself typing in the same commands over and over, then it is a good indication that you should write an alias for that. For example, I used to frequently switch to my website’s local theme directory using the command:
cd ~/vagrant-local/www/CoreyMS/htdocs/wp-content/themes/simone-coreymsThat’s a pain to type time and time again! In this video, I’ll show you how you can set up your terminal so that you can create shortcuts for these frequent commands. Then you can create aliases that are unique to you and your workflow. Let’s get started: