Dotfiles

• Dotfiles
  • What/Why
  • How/Details
    • Prompt
    • Zsh Config
    • Sibling Repos
    • Scripts
  • New machine setup
  • Benchmarking/Profiling
  • Versions/Credits

What/Why

The primary goals of this repo are:

1. Make it easy to setup a new machine to be ready for development work
2. Provide tools and workflows for adding dependencies, apps, and so on while also tracking those changes in this repo. This allows other workstations to stay in sync and prevents this repo from becoming outdated.

How/Details

• brew bundle lets me list dependencies and applications in a declarative Brewfile format so that they can then be installed automatically via homebrew and the Mac App Store CLI.
• mackup symlinks config files from a git submodule into their target destinations (usually the $HOME directory).
• zcompile-many is a DIY alternative to zsh plugin managers like zplug (which I previously used). It is configured in .zshrc and is used to install and load zsh-specific plugins.
• A few shell scripts in this repo help with initial bootstrapping and then the upkeep of this system over time.

Prompt

For my shell prompt, I use starship.rs. It's fast and the default theme and integration with the tools and languages I use is plenty sufficient.

Zsh Config

The .zshrc is broken into phases:

1. Path config - loads all path.zsh files found in this repo.
2. General config - loads the remaining *.zsh files found in this repo, excluding completion.zsh files (that happens later).
3. Install zsh plugins - installs and compiles zsh plugins.
4. Enable zsh completion.
5. Load zsh plugins.
6. Completion config - loads all completion.zsh files found in this repo.
7. Finally, initializes the shell prompt.

Finding and automatically loading .zsh files from this repo in a particular order allows us to organize zsh config more sensibly rather than putting everything in .zshrc. Most of the top-level directories in this repo contain .zsh files that provide necessary zsh configuration for those languages, tools, etc.

Sibling Repos

• The Mackup submodule contains everything that mackup syncs. For now, I'm keeping this as a private submodule in case those files contain something sensitive. Ideally these could all be included directly in this repo.
• The private submodule contains config files, scripts, and gpg keys that need to be kept private and thus can't live in this repo. The scripts below and the shell profile/rc files will check for similarly named files in this submodule and source them appropriately.

For both of these, I have a shell script that I run periodically that commits and pushes any changes within these submodules and then updates the submodule revisions in this parent repo.

Scripts

• ,asdf-bootstrap.sh installs all of the asdf plugins that I use along with the latest version of each of the languages provided by these plugins. Note that this depends on asdf already being installed.
• ,backup.sh runs mackup backup to capture the latest config files, then commits and pushes them (via the private submodule), and then updates the submodule ref in the root of this repo.
• ,bootstrap.sh runs everything needed to setup a new machine, but should also be safe to run at any time.
  • If a bootstrap.sh script exists in the private/ submodule, it will be sourced last.
• ,brew-bundle.sh installs homebrew if missing and then runs brew bundle to install all dependencies in the Brewfile
  • If a Brewfile exists in the private/ submodule, it will be used to run brew bundle, as well.
• ,brew-upgrade.sh runs ,brew-bundle.sh to ensure that Brew and everything in the Brewfiles are installed. Then upgrades all Brew formulae and casks. Finally updates the Brewfile.lock.jsons.
• ,link.sh symlinks shell config files from these dotfiles repos into the home and config directories. Used by the ,bootstrap.sh script.
• ,macos.sh will update Mac OS settings and user preferences.
• ,restore.sh runs mackup restore which links all of the config files from the Mackup/ submodule into the expected location (typically the HOME directory).
  • If a restore.sh script exists in the private/ submodule, it is sourced after running mackup restore. This allows for profile-specific linking of configuration files. For example, you may have multiple profiles each with a unique .pip/pip.conf.

New machine setup

1. Sign in to Chrome and GitHub

2. Generate SSH keys. Follow these instructions, but name the files based on the GitHub username instead of the defaults.

   github-help-generating-ssh-key

   github-help-adding-ssh-key

   Note: Be sure to create a ~/.ssh/config that uses this SSH key with the github.com host. The bootstrap script below will then override it.

3. Clone the dotfiles repo:

   mkdir ~/.config; cd ~/.config && git clone [email protected]:ekweible/dotfiles.git && cd dotfiles

4. Clone the two sibling dotfiles repos (private config and the applicable profile config for this machine).

5. Run the bootstrap script:

   ./bin/,bootstrap.sh

   This script is idempotent and safe to run multiple times.

6. See private repo README for configuring Internet Accounts.

Benchmarking/Profiling

• Uncomment the zprof lines at the top and bottom of .zshrc and then load a new shell to see profiling information.
• Use zsh-bench.

Versions/Credits

• V1: Originally forked from atomantic's dotfiles.
• V2: Overall setup inspired by Zach Holman's dotfiles.
• V2: A minimal zsh theme and some iTerm2 configuration inspired by Stefan Judis' iTerm2 + zsh setup.
• V3: A simplified approach that relies on brew bundle for declarative dependencies, mackup for syncing config/settings, and shell config and shell scripts for everything else.
• V4: To improve shell startup time, switched from zplug to custom zsh plugin management (thanks to zsh-bench!) and switched to starship.rs for the shell prompt. To improve organization, switched to a module-based layout with directories containing zsh config for each thing (like a language or tool) that gets auto-loaded by .zshrc.

Huge thanks to all of these people and the resources they've shared!