Local configuration overrides¶

Depending on the application used it is possible to override configuration. Here is the list:

Vim overrides¶

Vim configuration can be overridden using the following options:

g:powerline_config_overrides

Dictionary, recursively merged with contents of powerline/config.json.

g:powerline_theme_overrides

Dictionary mapping theme names to theme overrides, recursively merged with contents of powerline/themes/vim/key.json. Note that this way some value (e.g. segment) in a list cannot be redefined, only the whole list itself: only dictionaries are merged recursively.

g:powerline_config_paths

Paths list (each path must be expanded, ~ shortcut is not supported). Points to the list of directories which will be searched for configuration. When this option is present, none of the other locations are searched.

g:powerline_no_python_error

If this variable is set to a true value it will prevent Powerline from reporting an error when loaded in a copy of vim without the necessary Python support.

g:powerline_use_var_handler

This variable may be set to either 0 or 1. If it is set to 1 then Vim will save log in g:powerline_log_messages variable in addition to whatever was configured in log_* options. Level is always log_level, same for format.

Warning

This variable is deprecated. Use log_file option in conjunction with powerline.vim.VimVarHandler class and Vim config overrides variable. Using this is also the only variant to make saving into the environment variable the only place where log is saved or save into different variable.

class powerline.vim.VimVarHandler(varname)[source]¶

Vim-specific handler which emits messages to Vim global variables

Parameters:: varname (str) – Variable where

Powerline script overrides¶

Powerline script has a number of options controlling powerline behavior. Here VALUE always means “some JSON object”.

-c KEY.NESTED_KEY=VALUE or --config-override=KEY.NESTED_KEY=VALUE

Overrides options from powerline/config.json. KEY.KEY2.KEY3=VALUE is a shortcut for KEY={"KEY2": {"KEY3": VALUE}}. Multiple options (i.e. -c K1=V1 -c K2=V2) are allowed, result (in the example: {"K1": V1, "K2": V2}) is recursively merged with the contents of the file.

If VALUE is omitted then corresponding key will be removed from the configuration (if it was present).

-t THEME_NAME.KEY.NESTED_KEY=VALUE or --theme-override=THEME_NAME.KEY.NESTED_KEY=VALUE

Overrides options from powerline/themes/ext/THEME_NAME.json. KEY.NESTED_KEY=VALUE is processed like described above, {ext} is the first argument to powerline script. May be passed multiple times.

If VALUE is omitted then corresponding key will be removed from the configuration (if it was present).

-p PATH or --config-path=PATH

Sets directory where configuration should be read from. If present, no default locations are searched for configuration. No expansions are performed by powerline script itself, but -p ~/.powerline will likely be expanded by the shell to something like -p /home/user/.powerline.

Warning

Such overrides are suggested for testing purposes only. Use Environment variables overrides for other purposes.

Environment variables overrides¶

All bindings that use POWERLINE_COMMAND environment variable support taking overrides from environment variables. In this case overrides should look like the following:

OVERRIDE='key1.key2.key3=value;key4.key5={"value":1};key6=true;key1.key7=10'

. This will be parsed into

{
    "key1": {
        "key2": {
            "key3": "value"
        },
        "key7": 10,
    },
    "key4": {
        "key5": {
            "value": 1,
        },
    },
    "key6": True,
}

. Rules:

Environment variable must form a semicolon-separated list of key-value pairs: key=value;key2=value2.
Keys are always dot-separated strings that must not contain equals sign (as well as semicolon) or start with an underscore. They are interpreted literally and create a nested set of dictionaries: k1.k2.k3 creates {"k1":{"k2":{}}} and inside the innermost dictionary last key (k3 in the example) is contained with its value.
Value may be empty in which case they are interpreted as an order to remove some value: k1.k2= will form {"k1":{"k2":REMOVE_THIS_KEY}} nested dictionary where k2 value is a special value that tells dictionary-merging function to remove k2 rather then replace it with something.
Value may be a JSON strings like {"a":1} (JSON dictionary), ["a",1] (JSON list), 1 or -1 (JSON number), "abc" (JSON string) or true, false and null (JSON boolean objects and Null object from JSON). General rule is that anything starting with a digit (U+0030 till U+0039, inclusive), a hyphenminus (U+002D), a quotation mark (U+0022), a left curly bracket (U+007B) or a left square bracket (U+005B) is considered to be some JSON object, same for exact values true, false and null.
Any other value is considered to be literal string: k1=foo:bar parses to {"k1": "foo:bar"}.

The following environment variables may be used for overrides according to the above rules:

POWERLINE_CONFIG_OVERRIDES

Overrides values from powerline/config.json.

POWERLINE_THEME_OVERRIDES

Overrides values from powerline/themes/ext/key.json. Top-level key is treated as a name of the theme for which overrides are used: e.g. to disable cwd segment defined in powerline/themes/shell/default.json one needs to use:

POWERLINE_THEME_OVERRIDES=default.segment_data.cwd.display=false

Additionally one environment variable is a usual colon-separated list of directories: POWERLINE_CONFIG_PATHS. This one defines paths which will be searched for configuration. Empty paths in POWERLINE_CONFIG_PATHS are ignored.

Note

Overrides from environment variables have lower priority then Powerline script overrides. Latter are suggested for tests only.

Zsh/zpython overrides¶

Here overrides are controlled by similarly to the powerline script, but values are taken from zsh variables. Environment variable overrides are also supported: if variable is a string this variant is used.

POWERLINE_CONFIG_OVERRIDES: Overrides options from powerline/config.json. Should be a zsh associative array with keys equal to KEY.NESTED_KEY and values being JSON strings. Pair KEY.KEY1 VALUE is equivalent to {"KEY": {"KEY1": VALUE}}. All pairs are then recursively merged into one dictionary and this dictionary is recursively merged with the contents of the file.
POWERLINE_THEME_OVERRIDES: Overrides options from powerline/themes/shell/*.json. Should be a zsh associative array with keys equal to THEME_NAME.KEY.NESTED_KEY and values being JSON strings. Is processed like the above POWERLINE_CONFIG_OVERRIDES, but only subdictionaries for THEME_NAME key are merged with theme configuration when theme with given name is requested.
POWERLINE_CONFIG_PATHS: Sets directories where configuration should be read from. If present, no default locations are searched for configuration. No expansions are performed by powerline script itself, but zsh usually performs them on its own if variable without is set without quotes: POWERLINE_CONFIG_PATHS=( ~/example ). In addition to arrays usual colon-separated “array” string can be used: POWERLINE_CONFIG_PATHS=$HOME/path1:$HOME/path2.

Ipython overrides¶

Ipython overrides depend on ipython version. Before ipython-0.11 additional keyword arguments should be passed to setup() function. After ipython-0.11 c.Powerline.KEY should be used. Supported KEY strings or keyword argument names:

config_overrides: Overrides options from powerline/config.json. Should be a dictionary that will be recursively merged with the contents of the file.
theme_overrides: Overrides options from powerline/themes/ipython/*.json. Should be a dictionary where keys are theme names and values are dictionaries which will be recursively merged with the contents of the given theme.
config_paths: Sets directories where configuration should be read from. If present, no default locations are searched for configuration. No expansions are performed thus paths starting with ~/ cannot be used: use os.path.expanduser().

Prompt command¶

In addition to the above configuration options $POWERLINE_COMMAND environment variable can be used to tell shell or tmux to use specific powerline implementation and $POWERLINE_CONFIG_COMMAND to tell zsh or tmux where powerline-config script is located. This is mostly useful for putting powerline into different directory.

Note

$POWERLINE_COMMAND is always treated as one path in shell bindings, so path with spaces in it may be used. To specify additional arguments one may use $POWERLINE_COMMAND_ARGS, but note that this variable exists for testing purposes only and may be removed. One should use Environment variable overrides instead.

To disable prompt in shell, but still have tmux support or to disable tmux support environment variables $POWERLINE_NO_{SHELL}_PROMPT and $POWERLINE_NO_{SHELL}_TMUX_SUPPORT can be used (substitute {SHELL} with the name of the shell (all-caps) that should be affected (e.g. BASH) or use all-inclusive SHELL that will disable support for all shells). These variables have no effect after configuration script was sourced (in fish case: after powerline-setup function was run). To disable specific feature support set one of these variables to some non-empty value.

In order to keep shell prompt, but avoid launching Python twice to get unused above lines in tcsh $POWERLINE_NO_TCSH_ABOVE or $POWERLINE_NO_SHELL_ABOVE variable should be set.

In order to remove additional space from the end of the right prompt in fish that was added in order to support multiline prompt $POWERLINE_NO_FISH_ABOVE or $POWERLINE_NO_SHELL_ABOVE variable should be set.

PDB overrides¶

Like shell bindings PDB bindings take overrides from environment variables.