When comparing Spaceship vs Pure, the Slant community recommends Pure for most people. In the question“What's the best theme for Oh My Zsh?” Pure is ranked 2nd while Spaceship is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Pure is:
Uses a combination of colors to differentiate between different elements in the prompt. No brackets or unnecessary special characters.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy installation
Spaceship isn't included in Oh My Zsh by default, but the repo includes an install script that takes less than a second to get it up and running.
Pro Node and nvm integration
When using the spaceship theme and you use nvm so switch to an older version of Node, the prompt will show the version of Node you are currently using.
Pro Git integration
If you're inside of a directory that has a Git repository setup, Spaceship shows you information like what branch you're on, if your repository has changes and if there are unpushed commits or upstream commits.
Pro Easily customizable
Spaceship has lots of options to let you customize it to your heart's desire with variables set in your .zshrc file.
Pro Notifies on non-zero exit codes
The cursor turns red if the command executed exited with a non-zero exit code.
Pro Ruby and rvm integration
When using Spaceship, you also get a nice little gem showing the Ruby version currently used in RVM.
Pro Available through the AUR
If you are on Arch this ensures an easy install. Just search for spaceship-prompt-git!
Pro Looks good
Pro Minimalistic
Uses a combination of colors to differentiate between different elements in the prompt. No brackets or unnecessary special characters.
Pro Very simple and clean + clear
Pro Git integration
Shows which git branch you are currently on and whether the branch is dirty (in that case it shows a *
next to the branch name).
Pro Included in oh-my-zsh
This plugin is included in the base installation.
Cons
Con Really slow when working with kubernetes or big repositories
Con npm install empties your zshrc file without even making a backup
Con Not included in Oh My Zsh
You have to install this script manually, or with the provided installation script.
Con Doesn't support older zsh
Doesn't work on debian jessie with zsh 5.0.7.
Con Inflexible
Configuration options are very limited. If the defaults don't work for you, you have to either patch the code or look for a different theme.
Con Requires a custom color scheme to look decent
It looks awful with all builtin color schemes. I couldn't make it look the way it does on the screenshot.
Con Git prompt stops working after some time
Con No number of background processes
You won't see if there are background processes running (or how many).