What is this?

My unix environment (macOS, Linux) including all dotfiles, software installation, etc. I spin up new shells somewhat regularly, and it's a huge hassle to rebuild my environment each time.

This was designed so that anyone can use it, but that's mostly so I don't have a bunch of things hardcoded. I can't imagine anyone besides me actually using this, but it could serve as an inspiration for others or just another example for how to use chezmoi.

Installation

There is an install.sh script which you can use to get started. It will install chezmoi, which will take care of everything else.

If you are installing on macOS you shouldn't need to do anything other than install xcode and CLI tools. If you are installing on Ubuntu I would recommend:

apt install build-essential procps curl file git zsh
bash <(curl -sL https://gist.githubusercontent.com/bmatheny/f7cef71291d1ea3175b6d9d1bf312a3e/raw/install_ruby_rpi.sh)

Assuming you have the appropriate pre-requisites installed, I would recommend installing as:

$ ASK=y zsh -c "$(curl -fsLS https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bmatheny/dotfiles/main/install.sh)"

Please note all the usual caveats about trusting code from a remote location.

Basic customization

For day to day tweaks and adjustments, these are the locations to put things.

Packages

Be sure to put new packages to be installed in ~/.config/bmatheny/Brewfile and any new ruby gems to be installed in ~/.config/bmatheny/Gemfile. These will be part of a small number of files that will be managed outside of the repository.

vim

• Plugins
  • After you add or update plugins, although automated, you may want to run the following command in your shell: vim -es -u ~/.vimrc -i NONE -c "PlugInstall" -c "qa"
  • Adding new plugins should be done in...
• Scripts/customizations

zsh

Put customizations in ~/.config/zsh/before or ~/.config/zsh/after. These will be sourced before and after other dotfiles included with this project.

Chezmoi Customization

This project uses chezmoi for dotfiles management. As such I try to follow chezmoi conventions.

The configuration template (.chezmoi.toml.tmpl) will get expanded when you first initialize the repository and put in ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml where you can fill out configuration values. Things should work if you do nothing (besides git name/email being wrong). Intent of variables are outlined below.

environment variables

• ASK=y before initialization in order to get prompted for some variables

chezmoi Variables

• data.git.name - Your name
• data.git.email - Your email address
• data.ssh.configs - Location where SSH configurations including keys can be found.
  • If $HOME is found in string, it will be replaced with home directory
  • SSH configuration will include files $data.ssh.configs/config.d/*
• data.ssh.keys - Array of private keys that should be copied into ~/.ssh/
  • Note: File will be copied from $data.ssh.configs/$data.ssh.keys

How chezmoi is used

Externals

You can find externally sourced software in .chezmoiexternal.toml. These are:

• My prezto fork
• plug.vim plugin manager

Although, if you have not installed homebrew and chezmoi, those will be sourced as well.

Scripts

There are a number of scripts for managing parts of the repository and your dotfiles. These are not very complex. They are all templates, primarily because they are run once scripts that track the hash of repo files and run again if the hash is updated.

• run_once_after_prezto - Installs prezto the first time it is needed, also creates symlinks to files like ~/.zpreztorc if the file hash changes
• run_once_after_ssh - Installs private keys into your .ssh/ directory, or if they change
• run_once_vim_plugins - Installs vim plugins anytime .vim/plug.vim changes

Templates

Some documentation here

TODO items

• Update docs
  • Document relationship between scripts. When do they execute? On a first run, what executes and in what order? In a 'normal' run, what executes and in what order?
• Read TODO items in scripts

Ideas

• Handle HTTP/HTTP proxy early
• Linux support
• Could move SSH configs (private keys) into 1password or something similar
• Make prezto, git, vim configurations not depend on my stuff; allow them to be extended
• xcode install/select support for macos: sudo xcodebuild -license accept and something else

Notes

# Modern home directory
find ~/
.cache/          # XDG_CACHE_HOME user-specific non-essential (cached) data files
.config/         # XDG_CONFIG_HOME user-specific configuration files
.local/bin       # In PATH, user-specific executable files
.local/share/    # XDG_DATA_HOME user-specific data files
.local/state/    # XDG_STATE_HOME user-specific state files

XDG_STATE_HOME: action history (logs, history, recently used files) and current state of app that can be used on restart (view, layout, open files, undo history) XDG_CACHE_HOME: things not above

What is XDG_DATA_DIRS and XDG_CONFIG_DIRS for? If defined, XDG_DATA_DIR and XDG_CONFIG_DIR takes precedence over anything in XDG_{DATA,CONFIG}_DIRS.

XDG_DATA_DIRS if not populated defaults to /usr/local/share:/usr/share XDG_CONFIG_DIRS if not populated defaults to /etc/xdg/

Search for data files by default would be: .local/share, /usr/local/share, /usr/share Search for config dirs by default would be: .config/, /etc/xdg