Install Oh My Zsh on Windows Git BASH

Useful links

• Git for Windows + Git BASH
• Chocolatey
• GNU Make (Chocolatey)
• Oh My Zsh
• MSYS2 Zsh
• Zstandard

Before you start

1. Download and install Git for Windows + Git BASH
2. Install Chocolatey
3. Install GNU Make (Chocolatey), eg choco install make

Install Zsh

Run Git BASH as administrator and execute the following

1. Download the zsh package

     curl -sL https://mirror.msys2.org/msys/x86_64/zsh-5.8-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst -o zsh.tar.zst
   

2. Clone the zstd repo to use it for decompression

     git clone https://github.com/facebook/zstd.git
   

3. Build zstd and untar + decompress the zsh package

     CC=gcc make -C zstd
     mkdir zsh && tar --use-compress-program=zstd/zstd.exe -xvf zsh.tar.zst -C zsh
   

4. Merge the zsh content to Git BASH directory

     cp -R zsh/etc /
     cp -R zsh/usr /
   

5. Set up zsh

     touch ~/.zshrc
     echo "test -t && exec zsh" >> ~/.bashrc
   

6. Clean up and test zsh

     rm -rf zsh zsh.tar.zst zstd
     zsh --version
   

Set up Oh My Zsh

At this point you have zsh installed, next just set up Oh My Zsh the way you like.

## install oh my zsh
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

## install plugins etc