Re: Official plugin manager?

[Roman Perepelitsa <roman.perepelitsa@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jan 3, 2020 at 10:06 PM Daniel Shahaf <d.s@daniel.shahaf.name> wrote:
> P.S. Some ideas for what to have there:
>
> - PS1

This is just my personal opinion that I don't hold very strongly and
my voice obviously carries little weight here. I think zshrc
recommended by zsh should be very conservative. It should enable users
to get started (basic keys must work, prompt must show current
directory, completions must work -- this sort of stuff) *and* it must
enable average users to take control over their configuration. The
danger of too complex starter zshrc is that users won't be able to
understand it, and will have worse setup long term because of this.

To be more specific:

- no vcs_info. in some environments it makes prompt noticeably slow;
it also adds a lot of complexity
- the config itself must not have any configuration options of its
own, be it zstyle or parameters; it's a config, not a meta config;
users should be encouraged to edit it rather than create another
config with parameters for this config and source one from another
- no prompt_subst or precmd hooks
- no prompt shortening; display directory as %~
- no syntax highlighting, autosuggestions or any other external
plugins; autoloading functions bundled with zsh is OK
- single file (zshrc)

The file should explain through comments what things mean ("%~ is
current directory", etc) and should suggest where users should add
their aliases and exported variables. Comments should also suggest
where more information can be found ("for more information about
prompting, see xxx"). Links to web pages here work better than `man`
commands, although putting both of them will also work.

What about the goodies though? Leave that to the market. Anyone can
come up with a config template, or even an interactive dialog that
creates a config based on your preferences. Let them compete. zsh
should be *usable* upon installation but not bloated or opinionated.

Just my 2 cents. You may notice that my opinions here can be summed up
as "do what Bash does" without much loss of fidelity.

Roman.