It seems like everyone and their dog has their own way to show the current Git branch in the command prompt. Here's mine. Drop this into your ~/.profile:
export PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\] \[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]$(git branch &>/dev/null; if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "\[\033[01;33m\]($(git branch | grep ^*|sed s/\*\ //))\[\033[00m\]"; fi)$ 'The result looks like this:
craig@shiny ~/sandbox/addressbook(master)$Now with 50% cleaner code
Shortly after posting this, I discovered that Git ships with an auto-completion file that includes a handy __git_ps1 function. If you enable Git auto-completion, you can get the same prompt with much less noise -- and pick up some useful tab-completion goodies along the way:
export PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\] \[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]$(__git_ps1 "\[\033[01;33m\](%s)\[\033[00m\]")$ '