dotfiles

file structure

• /

  The base dir holds the install script and fundamental/universal dotfiles.

• /apps

  Contains config files for external/third-party applications. See dependencies to see which apps need to be installed to use these dotfiles.

• /shutils

  Contains shell scripts that set up third-party CLIs/shell utilities.

installation

I'm currently using Dotbot to install and manage my dotfiles. I also use Oh My Bash! to make my terminal fancy. Both of these tools are included as git submodules in this repo.

To update either, run git submodule update --remote <dotbot/oh-my-bash> in the main dotfiles directory. If you git pull from this repo and suddenly it looks like you have unsaved changes, you probably need to update one of the submodules. To install a new submodule, run:

git submodule add <repo-url>
git config -f .gitmodules submodule.dotbot.ignore dirty  # ignore dirty commits in the submodule

To install the dotfiles, run:

./install

This will install all dotfiles as indicated in the install.conf.yaml file. Note that dotbot does not have any backup functionality (yet?), so make sure you have saved any dotfiles that might be overridden first.

If anything goes wrong with the install, reference the troubleshooting section for help.

dependencies

My config includes dotfiles and commands for a few utilities that need to be manually installed (at least until I decide to figure out how to make it automatic):

• Hyper - with Git Bash as the terminal backend for Windows

• Visual Studio Code

• direnv - for managing environment variables on certain projects (mostly related to work)

  • Installing this on Windows involved downloading the executable and placing it in the Git Bash /bin so that it would be recognized. You can download that file here (and I am thinking about including it in this repo as well) ==TODO==

• pyenv/pyenv-win (and Python by extension)

  • I installed this with Chocolatey: choco install pyenv-win
  • Real Python's guide on Managing Multiple Python Versions with pyenv is also helpful
  • Manual and annoying way to update the install:

  cd ~/.pyenv
  git restore pyenv-win/.versions_cache.xml && git pull

• PostgreSQL

Strictly speaking, none of these tools are necessary - and not having them installed should not prevent you from installing the rest of the dotfiles and taking advantage of their base functionality. They just make my workplace setup feel more complete.

Both Hyper and PSQL have version numbers in their paths. If you've installed a different version locally, you can make a local bashrc file and override the environment variables:

touch ~/.bashrc_local
echo "# Local overrides for .bashrc config" >> ~/.bashrc_local
echo "export HYPER_VERSION=3.0.2" >> ~/.bashrc_local  # or whichever version you have
echo "export PSQL_VERSION=13" >> ~/.bashrc_local      # ex. 11

Other tools I often like to install but aren't managed by dotfiles (yet - still dreaming of that auto-installer):

• Atom
• PyCharm
• NodeJS
• Docker
• yarn
• go
• pandoc
• fonts!!

troubleshooting

Everything failed dramatically.

For Windows: Check that your terminal is running in administrator mode. If not, quit your session and switch modes. Windows will psychotically allow the installer to delete your previous files, but it will not allow you to copy over the new ones unless you're an admin.

Installing the Hyper config failed.

Dotbot is configured to only copy over the hyper.js file if Hyper is installed on your machine. To check this, it runs hyper version in the command line (so you do need to have the Hyper CLI bin added to your path).

If hyper version runs in the same directory as the hyper.js file, it will try to execute .js file instead. This obviously dunt do shit. I circumvented this issue by creating the /apps folder for app config files (including Hyper, and eventually VSCode). If you are experiencing it now, you somehow ended up with hyper.js back in your main directory. Put it back in /apps.

resources

• https://dotfiles.github.io/, a compendium.
• Getting Started with Dotfiles, a good overview/introduction. Answers the question "What are dotfiles?"
• Managing Your Dotfiles, from the creator of Dotbot. Their blog was helpful when I was getting started.

other things

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm sure there will be more to come.