ohmyzsh/plugins/profiles

profiles plugin

The profiles plugin allows you to automatically load machine-specific Zsh configuration files based on your fully qualified hostname. This is especially useful if you work across multiple systems (e.g. personal laptop, work server, containers) and need different aliases, environament variables, or behaveors on each.

To use it, add profiles to the plugins array of your zshrc file:

plugins=(... profiles)

How It Works

The plugin inspects the $HOST environament variable and attempts to source configuration files based on its domain hierarchy. For a hostname like:

HOST=host.domain.com

It fill try to source the following files in order of generality -> specificity:

$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/com
$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/domain.com
$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/host.domain.com

Each files is sourced if it exists. More specific files override earlier general settings.

Directory Structure

Create your profile files under:

$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/

Example structure:

~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/
├── plugins/
│   └── profiles/
│       └── profiles.plugin.zsh
└── profiles/
    ├── com
    ├── domain.com
    └── host.domain.com

Example

For HOST=dev.internal.example.com, the plugin will attempts to load:

$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/com
$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/example.com
$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/internal.example.com
$ZSH_CUSTOM/profiles/dev.internal.example.com

Tips

• Each profile file should contain valid Zsh code (e.g., export, alias, etc.).
• Later (more specific) profiles override settings from earlier (more general) ones.
• You can use this for environment-specific variables, host-specific tool paths, aliases, or functions.