How to have a nice bash shell prompt that will print the current git branch on the prompt.

This interesting bash function will get the git branch of the current working directory and then print it in the shell prompt. This could be very useful for a programmer.

git_branch() {
    git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/(\1)/'
}
 
PS1='┌──[\u@\h]─[\w]\n└──╼ $(git_branch) ╼ \$ '

This looks just like a normal shell prompt.

┌──[jason@jason-desktop]─[~]
└──╼  ╼ $ cd Documents/xray-16/

But when I cd into a directory containing code I got from Github, it shows that it is using a certain Git branch.

┌──[jason@jason-desktop]─[~/Documents/xray-16]
└──╼ (xd_dev) ╼ $

This indeed would be very useful for someone who uses Git on a regular basis, this would inform you which branch you are pushing to and hopefully avoid embarrassing mistakes.