A simple bash alias to notify you when a command is done.

Certain commands take a lifetime. When I’m running tests, installing dependencies, deploying to a server or creating infrastructure using AWS CloudFormation, I usually switch to another window to not waste that time looking at the screen while the operations happen. But also I like to know when the task is done so I can carry on with the work I was doing.

Bash is really powerful and I really love adding aliases and small tricks to my configuration to improve my productivity, so i created this alias that can be added to the ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile files to notify me when a task is done or exited with an error:

pingme_fn() {
    "$@" && say "Hey $USER, command finished successfully" || say  "command finished with exit status $?"
}
pingme=pingme_fn

Then after sourcing the file that contains the alias, e.g: $ source ~/.bash_profile, you can use it like $ pingme long_running_command:

$ pingme rebar3 compile

This trick works on MacOS only, to make it work in Linux, you will need to use another command like espeak.

Hope it can be useful to anyone out there. Happy hacking!