Proxy Support

If you are working in a corporate environment where you have to go through a proxy server for internet access, then you know how painful it is to configure the OS proxy variables in the shell, especially if you are switching between environments, e.g. office (with proxy) and home (without proxy).

The Bash shell (and many shell tools) use the following variables to define the proxy to use:

  • HTTP_PROXY (and http_proxy): Defines the proxy server for HTTP requests

  • HTTPS_PROXY (and https_proxy): Defines the proxy server for HTTPS requests

  • ALL_PROXY (and all_proxy): Used by some tools for the same purpose as above

  • NO_PROXY (and no_proxy): Comma-separated list of hostnames that don’t have to go through the proxy

Bash-it’s proxy plugin allows to enable and disable these variables with a simple command. To start using the proxy plugin, run the following:

bash-it enable plugin proxy

Bash-it also provides support for enabling/disabling proxy settings for various shell tools. The following backends are currently supported (in addition to the shell’s environment variables): Git, SVN, npm, ssh. The proxy plugin changes the configuration files of these tools to enable or disable the proxy settings.

Bash-it uses the following variables to set the shell’s proxy settings when you call enable-proxy. These variables are best defined in a custom script in Bash-it’s custom script folder ($BASH_IT/custom), e.g. $BASH_IT/custom/proxy.env.bash

  • BASH_IT_HTTP_PROXY and BASH_IT_HTTPS_PROXY: Define the proxy URL to be used, e.g. ‘http://localhost:1234

  • BASH_IT_NO_PROXY: A comma-separated list of proxy exclusions, e.g. 127.0.0.1,localhost

Once you have defined these variables (and have run reload to load the changes), you can use the following commands to enable or disable the proxy settings in your current shell:

  • enable-proxy: This sets the shell’s proxy environment variables and configures proxy support in your SVN, npm, and SSH configuration files.

  • disable-proxy: This unsets the shell’s proxy environment variables and disables proxy support in your SVN, npm, and SSH configuration files.

There are many more proxy commands, e.g. for changing the local Git project’s proxy settings. Run glossary proxy to show the available proxy functions with a short description.