Install ansiweather with Homebrew, apt

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• ansiweather

Project history

The official changelog records AnsiWeather 1.00 as the initial release on 19 October 2013. Early releases added configuration files, automatic location support, wind and forecast display, daylight data, and then removed or tightened automatic behavior as API and portability needs changed.

By 2015, AnsiWeather had moved toward explicit user configuration: OpenWeatherMap API key support was added, automatic location helper behavior was removed, and the default location was changed. Later releases focused on shell portability, HTTPS API calls, delimiter changes, XDG-related configuration behavior, and display options such as UV index and feels-like temperature.

Adoption history

The README lists packages for OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, Homebrew, Haiku, and Gentoo. That package spread reflects a tool that fits neatly into Unix package systems: one script, common dependencies, a man-page-like README, and no daemon.

AnsiWeather is adopted mostly as a terminal utility rather than as a library. Its users are shell prompt tinkerers, status bar authors, and people who want weather output scriptable enough for cron, tmux, screenshots, or login messages.

How it is used

Users run ansiweather with options such as -l for location, -u for unit system, -f or -F for forecast mode, -k for OpenWeatherMap API key, and toggles for colors, symbols, wind, humidity, pressure, daylight, UV index, and feels-like temperature.

The default config file is ~/.ansiweatherrc, and ANSIWEATHERRC can point to another file. Because the OpenWeatherMap API key can be supplied with -k or stored in that configuration file, the same documented path is both a configuration location and a likely credentials location.

Why package nerds care

AnsiWeather is a compact example of the packageable shell-script app: simple source, explicit external commands, readable config, distro package links, and enough API churn handling to show why tiny CLIs still need maintenance.

It also captures a familiar terminal era: colored output, Unicode symbols, curl pipelines, jq parsing, and personal status displays, all before needing a richer TUI or desktop widget.

Timeline

• 2013: AnsiWeather 1.00 initial release.
• 2015: Config file support, forecast features, daylight data, and OpenWeatherMap API key support appear.
• 2016: Plain sh portability work and BSD 2-Clause relicensing.
• 2019: Weather API calls switch to HTTPS.
• 2020: Config delimiter behavior changes and parsing portability improves.
• 2021: Feels-like temperature display is added.
• 2023: AnsiWeather 1.19.0 refines examples, config sample, and locale handling.

Related projects

• OpenWeatherMap provides the weather API used by AnsiWeather.
• jq and bc are documented runtime dependencies for JSON parsing and arithmetic.

Sources

• https://github.com/fcambus/ansiweather#readme
• https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fcambus/ansiweather/master/ChangeLog
• source_facts.package-manager