vlsh — The Hackable Unix Shell

Features

Everything you need, nothing you don't

vlsh ships with the fundamentals done right, then gets out of your way.

⚡

Fast & Compiled

Built with V, vlsh compiles to a lean native binary. Cold start is near-instant — no interpreter overhead on every keystroke.

Pipes, Redirection & Chains

First-class support for | pipes, > / >> redirection, and && command chaining. Glob expansion, tilde expansion, and $VAR substitution all work as expected.

💬

Smart History

Persistent command history across sessions (up to 5 000 entries). Press Ctrl+R for incremental search through every command you've run.

⇥

Tab Completion

File and directory completion out of the box. Plugins can register custom completions for commands, flags, and any domain-specific vocabulary.

🔌

Plugin System

Drop a .v file into ~/.vlsh/plugins/. vlsh compiles and loads it automatically — no restart required. Plugins can add commands, decorate the prompt, and provide completions.

⎗

Built-in Multiplexer

Split panes horizontally or vertically with Ctrl+V prefix bindings. Mouse support and 1 000-line scrollback per pane — no tmux dependency needed.

📜

Native .vsh Scripts

Run .vsh V scripts directly without manually compiling them first. Great for automation that needs performance without the ceremony of a full build.

🎨

Theming & Aliases

Configure prompt colors via RGB values in ~/.vlshrc. Manage aliases at runtime or persist them in your config — all without restarting the shell.

Installation

Get up and running

Pre-built packages for Linux, or build from source in seconds.

shell

# Download the latest .deb package from the releases page
wget https://github.com/vlshcc/vlsh/releases/latest/download/vlsh_linux_amd64.deb

# Install
sudo dpkg -i vlsh_linux_amd64.deb

# Add to valid login shells and set as default (optional)
echo "/usr/local/bin/vlsh" | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/vlsh

shell

# Download the standalone binary (64-bit Linux)
wget https://github.com/vlshcc/vlsh/releases/latest/download/vlsh_linux_amd64
chmod +x vlsh_linux_amd64
sudo mv vlsh_linux_amd64 /usr/local/bin/vlsh

# Add to valid login shells and set as default (optional)
echo "/usr/local/bin/vlsh" | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/vlsh

shell

# Requires V — https://vlang.io
git clone https://github.com/vlshcc/vlsh
cd vlsh
v .
sudo mv vlsh /usr/local/bin/vlsh

# Add to valid login shells and set as default (optional)
echo "/usr/local/bin/vlsh" | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/vlsh

Plugins

Extend with pure V

The plugin system is the heart of vlsh's hackability. Any .v file you drop into ~/.vlsh/plugins/ is automatically compiled and loaded on the next shell start. Plugins can:

1 Register new built-in commands available everywhere in the shell
2 Decorate the prompt — e.g. show the current git branch
3 Provide tab-completions for any command or flag
4 Interact with the shell environment (aliases, paths, venv vars)

~/.vlsh/plugins/git_branch.v

// Show the current git branch in the prompt
module plugins

import os

pub fn prompt_suffix() string {
    branch := os.execute('git branch --show-current')
    if branch.exit_code != 0 {
        return ''
    }
    return ' (\e[35m' + branch.output.trim_space() + '\e[0m)'
}