dotfiles

Copyright 2014-2025, Caleb Evans
Released under the MIT license

This repository describes and features the configuration files for my Terminal, as well as configuration for the applications and packages I use. Note that I am an avid macOS user, and therefore the majority of these customizations are specific to macOS. However, many of these customizations can also be applied on Linux systems.

Terminal configuration

Bash 5

macOS ships with Bash 3.2, however I use Bash 5 as my shell of choice. Bash 5 adds Unicode literals, the new globstar option, and support for Bash Completion 2. These reasons are enough for me to use Bash 5 over the bundled zsh shell (I also find zsh overrated, but that's just me).

Theme

For my work in the Terminal, I created Monokai, a minimalist theme which utilizes the Monokai color scheme. You may find the theme in this repository at terminal/themes/Monokai.terminal.

Interactive prompt

The PS1 interactive prompt which I have set for my shell is intended to be concise, readable, and useful. The prompt displays the name of the current working directory, followed by the name of the current branch if the directory is a git repository. If the directory contains a .virtualenv directory, the prompt also displays py2 or py3 depending on the virtualenv's Python version. Each component is displayed in a separate color to improve readability.

Completion

I use Bash Completion 2.1 for tab completion on the command line. Bash Completion 2 offers significant performance advantages over its predecessor (v1.3), making it the optimal choice for my completion needs.

Color highlighting

My setup enables color highlighting for a number of commands and interfaces, including:

• diff
• git diff (highlights changes within lines)
• grep, egrep, fgrep
• less
• ls
• tree
• vim (when editing commit messages)

Python virtualenv switching

If you open or cd into a current working directory contains a Python virtualenv (under the name .virtualenv), my Bash configuration will automatically activate that virtualenv. When you cd to another directory, that currently-active virtualenv will be automatically deactivated (and of course, any virtualenv present in the new directory will be activated).

VS Code configuration

I use VS Code as my editor of choice for editing text files and writing code. My VS Code configuration, included in this repository, features my main configuration, as well as preferred keymaps and snippets.

Emmet configuration

I have also included my configuration for Emmet, an invaluable package which enables quick HTML expansion within VS Code. This configuration is located under the emmet/ directory, and consists of both preferences and snippets for HTML expansion.

Please ensure that the ~/dotfiles/emmet directory is set as your Extensions Path within the Emmet package preferences, because this directory is where my VS Code configuration expects to find user configuration for Emmet. Executing the setup/create_symlinks.sh script will create the ~/dotfiles directory.

Setup scripts

I have also created a series of scripts which automatically configure my shell, set my preferred macOS preferences, install packages, and so forth. All of these scripts are located under the setup/ directory. You can run these scripts altogether via setup_all.sh, or individually by executing the respective script.

These scripts are generally useful for configuring fresh macOS installs, however they are also designed to be re-run as needed. For instance, create_symlinks.sh will ensure that the home directory symlinks to these dotfiles are all up to date. In addition, install_packages.sh installs those preferred Homebrew packages which are missing from the current system.

Node & Python tooling

Node versions are managed with fnm (see setup/install_node.sh and terminal/bash/load_fnm.sh), providing a significantly faster alternative to nvm. The interactive prompt auto-detects a project Node version and displays it in the PS1 string (see terminal/bash/prompt.sh).

For Python, projects use uv for environment and dependency management (see migration helpers and replacement rules). ruff is used as the combined Python linter and formatter; its integration appears in vscode/extensions.txt and vscode/settings.json.

Shell functions & aliases

Frequently-used helpers live in terminal/bash/functions.sh, including:

• mkcd – create and enter a directory
• rootdir – cd to the repository root for the current path
• clonecd – clone a git repository and immediately switch to the newly-cloned directory
• pr – create or view pull requests (with completion support in terminal/bash/completions.sh)

Additional private helpers and host-specific functions are layered via host-specific bash initialization files.

Advanced completion

Custom Bash completions in terminal/bash/completions.sh extend Bash Completion 2 with project-specific commands (e.g. completions for my pr helper) and tooling. General shell behavior (options like globstar) is configured in terminal/bash/config.sh.