Tools and Practice / Command Line Tools

Overview

This is a list of recommended tools used at I to enhance productivity and developer happiness.

You may also be interested in these other pages from the I Standard Devz Processes:

• docker
• direnv

Terminal Emulators

• iTerm2

Resources

iTerm2

Configuration

• itermocil - Create pre-defined window/pane layouts and run commands in iTerm

Shells

• bash
• zsh
• fish

Resources

zsh

Frameworks

• Oh My Zsh
• Prezto

fish

Frameworks

• Oh My Fish

Configuration

• chruby-fish - Thin wrapper around chruby to make it work with the Fish shell

File compression and archiving

• unar Universal unarchiver
• zstd Ridonkulously fast (de)compression algorithm

git tools

• tig ncurses interface for git
• gitlab-cli A git helper for gitlab specific operations from the command-line

Colorizers

• grc Generic colorizer. For example: alias ping='\grc --stdout --stderr --colour=on ping'
• diff-so-fancy Prettier colored diffs in git.
• diffr Another colordiff alternative. For example: git diff | diffr

Navigation

• tmux Terminal multiplexer with client-server architecture. Can easily recover lost shell sessions with tpm, tmux-resurrect and (optionally) tmux-continuum
• ranger An ncurses file manager with vim-like bindings
• exa An ls replacement with git integrations. For example: alias ll='exa --long --header --git --links --group-directories-first --color-scale --time-style=long-iso'

Database access

• pgcli - CLI for Postgres with auto-completion and syntax highlighting.

Data Manipulation

JSON

• jq

Document format conversion

• dos2unix Efficient conversion of line terminators between DOS <-> Unix format
• pandoc Swiss-Army Knife of rich text document format conversion

Plain text search tools

• ripgrep Stronger, faster, better grep.

macOS system administration

• mas Control the Mac App Store from the command line

Remote host administration

• keychain User-friendly front-end to ssh-agent
• mosh Mobile-friendly ssh replacement that performs better on unreliable network connections.

HTTP clients

• httpie

Terminal recording/sharing

• asciinema - record and share Terminal sessions as text that you can copy and paste.

Learning/Debugging/Looking Things Up

• howdoi - instant coding answers via the command line
• tldr - simplifies man with practical examples

*nix tools

• cal - quick monthly calendar view for the command line