Fix OS X Terminal Launch Speed
Do you have the problem where opening a new terminal window (or tab) takes 3 to 10 seconds on OS X?
We can fix that.
The delay is because bash blocks while bash_completion loads.
You think they would have fixed that by now—and they have fixed that by now.
Newer Bash versions allow delayed loading of bash_completion so you can immediately open new terminals.
If newer versions of Bash work better, why aren’t we using them? Apple refuses to ship new Bash versions because Apple refuses to ship GPL3 binaries. Check your local /bin/bash --version.
My system-provided bash is:
% /bin/bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin14)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.Yes, that’s an almost 10 year old version of Bash because Apple is afraid to ship GPL3 licensed software.
Custom Install Bash
Luckily, we’re not forever tied to system-provided bash. We can easily use homebrew to install a newer bash, a newer bash_completion, then tell our system user to use the newer shell.
Install New Bash
Install a recent version of bash (instead of the 10 year old system provided version):
Update System Shell List
Add the new bash to your system list of allowed shells.
Add /usr/local/bin/bash to the file /etc/shells
Change Your Shell
Run the shell change utility and make your shell /usr/local/bin/bash
Install Better bash_completion
Install a new bash_completion from homebrew-versions.
We need a new version because the default provided by homebrew is pinned to an old version for compatability with the system-provided 10 year old version of bash.
brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-versions/master/bash-completion2.rbNote: bash-completion2 installs to a different location than regular bash-completion. Make sure you also update your bash profile to source bash-completion2 properly (homebrew will output the correct include syntax for you at the end of the install).
Now Open New Terminal
Now open new terminals and watch them become usable in less than a second instead of 5 to 10 seconds as before.