For a while, lots of people have been using their zsh prompts to display information about their current VCS (git in particular) working directories. I am no exception, though I was just doing a simple git rev-parse and git symbolic-ref in my precmd().

Starting with zsh-beta 4.3.6-dev-0+20080921-1, I am now using the vcs_info subsystem developed by Frank Terbeck. It has backends for bzr, cdv, cvs, darcs, git, hg, mtn, p4, svk, svn, and tla. These backends can be enabled or disabled via configuration.

To get it working quickly, do something like

autoload -Uz vcs_info

precmd() {
  psvar=()

  vcs_info
  [[ -n $vcs_info_msg_0_ ]] && psvar[1]="$vcs_info_msg_0_"
}

PS1="%m%(1v.%F{red}%1v%f.)%# "

Wouter,

You can do the similar things with better-licensed software:

gnutls-cli --insecure -p 443 samba.grep.be

and

gnutls-cli --insecure --starttls -p 587 samba.grep.be

Trick looked up at the bay window. He raised the phone and dialed. No answer. He looked at the window again. He dialed again. Brystol answered. She asked him what he wanted. She sounded irritated. He asked if he could come up. She told him no. In his romcom fantasy, she had welcomed him with warmth and gusto. He sighed and trudged off.

In her romcom fantasy, he had ignored her no, burst through the door, and generally behaved in such ways that, if her friend Chessil had expressed the same scenario, she would have described as most resembling a creepy stalker. When she peered out the window, he was no longer there. This happened several more times, and always ended in disappointment.

Brystol's boyfriend Trock knew that she wasn't into him enough. That much was obvious. In his romcom fantsay, though, his persistence and unwavering devotion finally melted her cold, black heart, and she changed into the woman of his dreams. In her romcom fantasy, he effortlessly changed into an entirely different man. Trock lavished her with attentions and affections, directly in furtherance of his aims. For this reason, she disrespected him greatly. Brystol did not want someone to put her on a pedestal, nor did she want someone who wanted to spend all his time with her. What she wanted was something entirely different.

One day, when particularly irritated by Trock, she called Trick and invited him to dinner. She made clear that it was strictly platonic. He dropped everything, cancelled all his plans, made several sacrifices that could not be justified if he were to try to explain this to someone logically, and met her for dinner. In his romcom fantasy, things would not be strictly platonic. In her romcom fantasy, he would ignore the platonic bit and put the moves on her. Both were disappointed that night.

Life began to wear on Brystol. Trock continued to grate on her nerves. She was losing hope for all aspects of her life, and panic caused her to travel on false pretenses to go visit her ex-boyfriend Treck. Treck was probably not what you would call a ladies' man, but he had lots of women, and he treated them all like dirt. In her previous dealings with him, Brystol had been subjected to all manner of abuse, and though she complained about it and reciprocated, this was treatment with which she was very comfortable. In her romcom fantasy, their mutual mistreatment was indicative for their great love for one another, and Treck would someday forego all his other affairs and declare her to be his one and only. In his romcom fantasy, he bested the Sultan of Brunei in personal combat, somehow won his title, and satisfied himself with no fewer than ten concubines per day.

Still, Brystol's soul was not completely filled, and when she returned home, she positioned herself in three ways to provoke Trick. In her romcom fantasy, he would recognize her vulnerability, accommodate her whims, and fight her boyfriend for her. He did not recognize her vulnerability, nor did he understand that her callous airs of indifference masked the significance of her seemingly innocuous statements to him of late. In his romcom fantasy she would stop being such a bitch.

Shortly thereafter they both died of broken hearts, one after the other. Trock was devastated. He couldn't figure out what had happened. Then again, who can?

This is the night that the clockwork burns down. This is the night of elbows scraping against iron bars. Tom Stoppard thought he had a glass full of fractals, when really it was an ass full of dactyls. This is the night of candelabras crashing into the shoes of giants. This is the night when the man with the homburg sings a hymn for the hopeless. The novice groped an honored mater outside the slic hut. This is the night that the hunger reached out for the abyss and fell in. This is the night that the crack broke its own mother's back. Sweet Nutty went to the levee and the levee didn't like it one bit. This is the night of the British spellings. This is the night of the sandpiper's dream. Lady Starbucks wondered about the healing powers of the dental-floss bikini. This is the night that nothing lasts forever. This is the night that nothing ever ends. The Q2 Gang tripped the light fantastic while waxing the text unreadable. This is the night of the Magic Mainspring. This is the night of remembering Trufflehunter's name. There's ice cream waiting for me in another world.

The loud girl wasn't there. The dynamic boy missed her only in the most tangential sense. As the radio plays. The flighty girl missed her when she wasn't getting enough attention, for the loud girl was disturbingly good at giving her attention. I just can't face myself alone again. The weary boy did not miss her, for he had peered into her soul and seen the evil fomenting within. Maybe we ain't that young anymore. Italian blared. You ain't a beauty but, hey, you're all right. The euphuistic boy was of three minds about the subject and he made no prætense about it. Throw roses in the rain. The rude girl flip-flopped like a politician on speed. For a savior to rise from these streets. They maintained their course, with smut, standards, and debauchery. Is beneath this dirty hood.

The weary boy invoked the power of pork, and the euphuistic boy invoked Chaim and his band of goyim. Let the wind blow back your hair. The flighty girl grew more insecure. We got one last chance to make it real.

Oh, Thunderoos.

That was the best flan I've had since A-Rod's cousin brought me some. Hers wasn't topped with dulce de leche though. Suite Judy Blue Eyes, the dulce de leche. Mmm.

I don't know how I managed to get intoxicated. The waiter did flash me a creepy, mischievous smile when he was pouring my wine, so maybe he spiked it. Maybe the fine herbs in my cooked cheese were of a special psychoactive variety. I don't know.

What I do know is that I noticed something was wrong when I found myself walking up to a police officer and wishing him buenas noches. This is an unwise thing to do in police states like the US or UK. Depending on region and jurisdiction, this type of behavior can get you searched, cuffed, jacked, detained, questioned, interrogated, co-opted to help steal a fire truck, beaten, shot, looked at with disdain, or Clockwork-Oranged. He just looked at me like I was completely unsuspicious.

Then I inquired about how babby is formed. A few minutes later I was trying to escape from the ninth floor of a construction zone.

I have a friend whose name isn't Ronaldinho. not-Ronaldinho lives at the crossroads between two cultures. One culture is all about paying attention to your fellow human, trying to behave with honor and propriety, not inconveniencing anyone or causing them distress. The other culture is more about being reactive. Do what it is you like, and if you end up bothering people, they will alert you with loud complaints. Depending on the situation, the loud complaints can either result in apologies and behavior correction, or escalation.

The two of them don't mix particularly well because they're founded on entirely different assumptions. It's like what the Uruguayan prostitute says about the sponge used to wash ambos lados. I really hate her for that attitude.

Once there was a professor, and they assigned a paper on epicene singular they in common usage around their school. One student interviewed other students as part of their research, and another student cited their paper as part of their research. They handed in their papers on time, as did most of the rest of the students, and the professor graded them. There was a hint of plagiarism in them, and they didn't know what to do about them. In the end, they appealed to the Academic Integrity Committee, and they discussed the matter with them.

Some of the them redefined success. They said that they reaped the benefits of flexibility, whether political or not, and that they did not suffer from problems of ambiguity or sounding illiterate. They, but not all of them, also said that prescriptive grammar was oppressing them, and that evidence of epicene singular they from the Middle Ages was clear basis for belief that subjunctives were dead and that they were only used by sticklers and language bigots. They maintained that they were keeping them down. The grades did not necessarily reflect this. They could infer from them that they had seen a world where they could use several anonymous antecedents of varying gender and number, and they would not need to use artificial gender-neutral pronouns when they could just rely on good and proper epicene singular they. They knew that once language shaped thought enough, there would be no need to expend the extra effort to clarify the doubts introduced by them using the same word to mean fifty different things, because they would just know what they were saying.

They didn't care at all that it sounded incredibly stupid. They only cared that they were right.

Things I am not going to do this week:

• Orphan arch-perl
• Orphan archway
• Orphan archzoom
• Orphan axp
• Switch libdb-dev to db4.7.
• Split debianutils into kernel-utils and sensible-utils.
• Orphan libuuid-perl
• Orphan mktemp or care whether or not coreutils will start shipping its version.

The worst thing an idealist can be is practical. I see this problem nearly every day when people are trying to comply with laws, rules, regulations, standards, or what-have-you. You fail to meet the objective, so you smudge reality and make compromises. Well, we cannot reasonably drive under the speed limit so let's arbitrarily make up our own limit (10 mph over) and stick to that. That way we endure the hardship of having to comply with something but not the extreme and unattainable hardship of complying with the real thing. Nevermind that some people actually obey the speed limit; that's just anecdotal evidence or a fluke or some other excuse you can use to disregard the fact that what you are claiming is impossible is actually possible.

That's an example of a rule mandated by an external power (the oppressor you theoretically owe your allegiance to or the oppressor you are on loan to). Where idealism really comes into play is when people choose their own oppression, be that a formal religion, moral code that they got from a pamphlet somebody was handing out on the sidewalk, or other voluntarily-adopted standards of behavior.

Then you end up with raw-food vegans who eat pepperoni pizza twice a week, environmentalists who drive cars, PETA members who keep pets, feminists who are lapsitters, Christians who sin, people who claim that things are best-effort, and people who claim that things that are obviously part of other things are not really part of those things.