Jump, a bookmarking system for the bash and zsh shells.¶ ↑

Jump is a tool that allows you to quickly change directories in the bash and zsh shells using bookmarks. Thanks to Jump, you won’t have to type those long paths anymore. Jump was inspired by go-tool by ActiveState.

Say you often work in a directory with a path like ‘/Users/giuseppe/Work/Projects/MyProject`. With Jump you can add a bookmark to it:

$ jump --add myproject

From now on you can jump to your project just by typing:

$ jump myproject

You can even append subfolders to the bookmark name!

$ jump myproject/src/

You can take a look at all your bookmarks with the ‘list` command:

$ jump --list

To delete a bookmark you don’t need anymore, use the ‘del` command:

$ jump --del myproject

To show the path to a bookmark, use the ‘path` command:

$ jump --path myproject

Don’t remember a command? Just type:

$ jump --help

Suppose you added a bookmark called rails-app pointing to /home/flavio/test/test_app. The folder contains the following files:

drwxr-xr-x 6 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 app
drwxr-xr-x 5 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 config
drwxr-xr-x 2 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 db
drwxr-xr-x 2 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 doc
drwxr-xr-x 3 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 log
drwxr-xr-x 5 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 public
-rw-r--r-- 1 flavio users   307 2010-08-10 10:38 Rakefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 flavio users 10011 2010-08-10 10:38 README
drwxr-xr-x 3 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 script
drwxr-xr-x 7 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 test
drwxr-xr-x 6 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 3 flavio users  4096 2010-08-10 10:38 vendor

The following completions are available:

$ jump ra[TAB]

is expanded to:

$ jump rails-app

While

$ jump rails-app/[TAB]

allows to choose between the following completions:

rails-app/        rails-app/config  rails-app/doc     rails-app/log     rails-app/script  rails-app/tmp
rails-app/app     rails-app/db      rails-app/lib     rails-app/public  rails-app/test    rails-app/vendor

Typing

$ jump rails-app/l[TAB]

suggests the following completions:

rails-app/lib  rails-app/log

Hence

$ jump rails-app/lo[TAB]

is automatically expanded to

$ rails-app/log

jump also allows users to print out the path of a bookmark. This adds a flavor of new commands in conjunction to jump. For example, jump allows a user to execute the following commands:

$ ls `jump -p rails-app`
$ cp `jump -p rails-app/Rakefile` .
$ vim `jump -p rails-app/README`

The advanced completion works out of the box for zsh users. The bash shell relies on bash_completion.

Jump is packaged as a gem:

$ gem install jump

The rubygem package shipped with Debian & Ubuntu acts in a different way. Once jump has been installed you have to updated your PATH (unless you have already done it).

Execute the following command:

$ gem environment

and take a look at the GEM PATHS section.

You will have something like that:

- GEM PATHS:
  - /var/lib/gems/1.8

In this case /var/lib/gems/1.8 is your GEM PATH. Add GEM PATH/bin to your PATH.

Later versions of Debian/Ubuntu don’t have a bin/ directory under the gems directory, so you should add the explicit jump gem directory to your path, ie:

/var/lib/gems/2.3.0/gems/jump-0.4.1/bin

Additonally you’ll want to run the following within the bin/ directory so you can run jump instead of jump-bin

$ cp jump-bin jump

It’s strongly recommended to install bash_completion. In this way you will have the best user experience.

Linux users can install it using their package manager (apt, zypper, yum, emerge…) while OSX users can install it via ports, fink or brew.

Execute the following command once jump has been installed:

sudo cp `jump-bin --bash-integration`/bash_completion/jump /path_to/bash_completion.d

The bash_completion.d directory is usually located under /etc/. OSX users will find this directory under fink/port/brew installation directory (e.g. /opt/local/etc).

Note for Ubuntu users: the gem contents jump command won’t show the absolute installation path.

All the files shipped with jump can be found under the following path:

[GEM PATH]/gems/jump-[JUMP VERSION]/

Take a look at the previous section in order to figure out your GEM PATH.

If you do not want to install bash_completion then add the following code to your bash configuration file (e.g. ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc’:

source `jump-bin --bash-integration`/shell_driver

Beware: without bash_completion you won’t be able use jump’s advanced completion features.

After having installed jump, add the following code to your .zshrc file:

source `jump-bin --zsh-integration`

© 2010 Flavio Castelli and Giuseppe Capizzi