Introduction
Fish Shell stands for friendly interactive shell which is fully-equipped, smart and user-friendly command-line shell that supports a lot of handy features unlike any other shell.
Features are Autosuggestion, Sane Scripting, Man Page Completions, Web-Based configuration and Glorious VGA Color.
Fish shell makes your command line more productive, useful & fun without remembering a bunch of Linux commands because of their handy features.
let’s go ahead and install it by following the below steps.
Installing Fish shell in Linux
Fish shell canbe installed easily since it is available in the default repositories of most Linux distributions. In case, if it is not available in your distro, please add Fish shell official repository to install it.
$ sudo yum install fish
$ sudo dnf install fish
$ sudo apt install fish[root@unixcop ~]# yum install fish -y
Failed to set locale, defaulting to C.UTF-8
Last metadata expiration check: 0:18:47 ago on Sun Aug 1 15:24:38 2021.
Dependencies resolved.
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Package Architecture Version Repository Size
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Installing:
fish x86_64 3.1.2-2.el8 epel 3.0 M
Installing dependencies:
libpkgconf x86_64 1.4.2-1.el8 baseos 35 k
pcre2-utf32 x86_64 10.32-2.el8 baseos 220 k
pkgconf x86_64 1.4.2-1.el8 baseos 38 k
pkgconf-m4 noarch 1.4.2-1.el8 baseos 17 k
pkgconf-pkg-config x86_64 1.4.2-1.el8 baseos 15 k
Installing weak dependencies:
man-pages x86_64 4.15-6.el8 baseos 5.9 M
man-pages-overrides noarch 8.3.0.2-2.el8 appstream 70 k
Transaction Summary
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Install 8 Packages
Total download size: 9.3 M
Installed size: 20 M
Downloading Packages:
(1/8): libpkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64.rpm 50 kB/s | 35 kB 00:00
(2/8): pcre2-utf32-10.32-2.el8.x86_64.rpm 233 kB/s | 220 kB 00:00
(3/8): pkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64.rpm 125 kB/s | 38 kB 00:00
(4/8): man-pages-overrides-8.3.0.2-2.el8.noarch.rpm 36 kB/s | 70 kB 00:01
(5/8): pkgconf-m4-1.4.2-1.el8.noarch.rpm 78 kB/s | 17 kB 00:00
(6/8): pkgconf-pkg-config-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64.rpm 24 kB/s | 15 kB 00:00
(7/8): man-pages-4.15-6.el8.x86_64.rpm 438 kB/s | 5.9 MB 00:13
(8/8): fish-3.1.2-2.el8.x86_64.rpm 210 kB/s | 3.0 MB 00:14
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Total 497 kB/s | 9.3 MB 00:19
Running transaction check
Transaction check succeeded.
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded.
Running transaction
Preparing : 1/1
Installing : pkgconf-m4-1.4.2-1.el8.noarch 1/8
Installing : pcre2-utf32-10.32-2.el8.x86_64 2/8
Installing : libpkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 3/8
Installing : pkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 4/8
Installing : pkgconf-pkg-config-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 5/8
Installing : man-pages-overrides-8.3.0.2-2.el8.noarch 6/8
Installing : man-pages-4.15-6.el8.x86_64 7/8
Installing : fish-3.1.2-2.el8.x86_64 8/8
Running scriptlet: fish-3.1.2-2.el8.x86_64 8/8
Verifying : man-pages-overrides-8.3.0.2-2.el8.noarch 1/8
Verifying : libpkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 2/8
Verifying : man-pages-4.15-6.el8.x86_64 3/8
Verifying : pcre2-utf32-10.32-2.el8.x86_64 4/8
Verifying : pkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 5/8
Verifying : pkgconf-m4-1.4.2-1.el8.noarch 6/8
Verifying : pkgconf-pkg-config-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 7/8
Verifying : fish-3.1.2-2.el8.x86_64 8/8
Installed:
fish-3.1.2-2.el8.x86_64 libpkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 man-pages-4.15-6.el8.x86_64 man-pages-overrides-8.3.0.2-2.el8.noarch
pcre2-utf32-10.32-2.el8.x86_64 pkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64 pkgconf-m4-1.4.2-1.el8.noarch pkgconf-pkg-config-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64
Complete!
[root@unixcop ~]# So For Arch Linux based systems, use pacman command to install fish shell.
$ sudo pacman -S fishInstalling Fish shell using Official repository
For Ubuntu and their derivatives, use apt command to install fish shell.
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:fish-shell/release-3
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install fishFedora, use DNF command to install fish shell.
$ sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:/fish:/release:/3/Fedora_31/shells:fish:release:3.repo
$ sudo dnf install fishFor Debian
$ sudo wget -nv https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:fish:release:3/Debian_10/Release.key -O Release.key
$ sudo apt-key add - < Release.key $ sudo echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:/fish:/release:/3/Debian_10/ /' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/shells:fish:release:3.list
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install fishFor RHEL/CentOS systems, use YUM command to install fish shell.
On RHEL 8:
$ sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:/fish:/release:/3/RHEL_8/shells:fish:release:3.repo
$ sudo yum install fishOn CentOS 8:
$ sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:/fish:/release:/3/CentOS_8/shells:fish:release:3.repo
$ sudo dnf install fishFor CentOS 7:
$ sudo yum-config-manager --add-repo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:fish:release:2/CentOS_7/shells:fish:release:2.repo
$ sudo yum install fishFor openSUSE Leap system, use zypper command to install fish shell.
$ sudo zypper addrepo https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/shells:/fish:/release:/3/openSUSE_Leap_15.2/shells:fish:release:3.repo
$ suod zypper refresh
$ sudo zypper install fishFish shell Usage
Once the fish shell installed successfully, just type fish in your terminal, which will automatically switch to the fish shell from the default bash shell.
$ fishBelow screenshot shows that the Fish shell is ready to use. “fish” default prompts the username, hostname, and working directory which canbe even customized, based on your requirement by executing the fish_prompt function.
Auto Suggestion
When you type few letters of commands in the fish shell, it will auto suggest a command in a light grey color which were recently used.
Tab Completion
After typing the desired command, press Tab button to discover any relevant commands.
Refer screenshot below:
Press the Tab button one more time to see the full list.
Also for example , you can move to the next directory with tab button to excute the command cd on this directory as shown above.
Syntax highlighting
Fish performs syntax highlighting, while typing any commands in the terminal.Invalid commands willbe highlighted in RED color.
Fish Shell will appear the valid with blue color wherein the invalid paths will appear in Red color
Web based configuration
Fish shell has a cool feature, that allow us to set colors, prompt, functions, variables, history and bindings via web browser.
Run the following command in the terminal, to launch the Web configuration interface.
Once executed, press Ctrl+c to exit .
root@unixcop ~# fish_config
Web config started at file:///tmp/web_configvim9bkn0.html
Hit ENTER to stop.
Conclusion
Tutorial has been precisely prepared to discuss about various features of Fish Shell.
