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dotfiles

A collection the dotfiles I use in my daily workflow.

Description

This includes the relevant dotfiles and general .config files I use across both a macOS environment, as well as an Arch Linux environment. The Arch environment relies on bwpsm as a window manager, sxhkd for keybindings, rofi as a launcher, and polybar as a status bar.

My preferred shell is zsh. The zshrc file relies on antibody to manage plugins. These plugins are listed here.

Requirements

See the relevant homepages for the Arch-based components listed above:

to install software and relevant dependencies, or consider using a package manager like the AUR with yay to make installation of these easier, if running something like Arch / Manjaro / Artix

Installation

As a bit of a disclaimer; if you're combing through a dotfiles repository, you may wish to pick and choose components from various repositories to create your own; in this case, you may not wish to follow these steps. Otherwise, the following steps will be divided into four separate stages:

  1. preliminary setup necessary for either (2) or (3)
  2. installing the dotfiles for my zsh configuration
  3. linking my config files for non-zsh components
  4. a handful of application-specific installation steps to use files in config

Cloning

  1. To begin either / both parts, clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/bradendubois/dotfiles <dotfile_location>

where <dotfile_location> is the desired location on your machine for this repository. This setup is rather flexible, and can be cloned reasonably anywhere.

  1. Open the file zsh/zprofiles/zprofile-start in your text editor of choice. Edit the following line:
export DOTFILES="$HOME/dotfiles"

such that DOTFILES points to wherever the repository is located on your machine. This zprofile-start file will be used as an easy way to point a few crucial environment variables to this repository so that most remaining components should ✨ just work ✨.

  1. Symlink this zprofile-start file in the dotfiles repository to your HOME directory as .zprofile:
ln dotfiles/zsh/zprofiles/zprofile-start ~/.zprofile

Note: Based on your current working directory, where the repository is cloned, etc., you may need to tweak the first argument, dotfiles/zsh/zprofiles/zprofile-start, to point to the zprofile-start file.

  1. Log out and back in. This will load .zprofile and should set the DOTFILES and ZDOTDIR environment variables accordingly.

zsh setup

In order to use some ✨ snazzy ✨ zsh plugins, I use (and recommend) antibody. Do not worry if your terminal prints some errors before this section has been followed all the way through, this is expected.

  1. Install antibody.
  2. Restart your terminal session. Provided antibody is now on your path, the plugins located at zsh/zsh_plugins.txt are being automatically installed.

Thanks to antibody and some refactors, this section has gotten a lot shorter!

miscellanea

  • Antibody uses "static loading" to make loading plugins faster. See the section Static loading here for more details on bundling.
  • My zsh configuration is made to load unique different files depending on the operating system detected by running uname. This can be used to load different files depending on macOS or Linux being used. This can be seen in the .zshrc and zprofile files included.

.config setup

Many components can be installed by simply linking or copying files from config to the $HOME/.config or equivalent directory. For simplicity, we can move existing configuration files found at ~/.config into the repository and symlinking the repository's config folder to begin tracking those files.

  1. Move any existing files into the repository's config folder:
mv ~/.config/* $DOTFILES/config
  1. Remove the now-empty .config folder:
rm -r ~/.config
  1. Symlink the repository's config folder to the $HOME directory as .config:
ln -sv $DOTFILES/config ~/.config

This last step could be different, depending on your preference and desire for XDG Base Directories. This is not necessary to change, and will work as-is, but one might wish to set their XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory somewhere else. My XDG_ environment variables are set in zsh/zprofiles/zprofile, and can be tweaked. Of course, doing so will require a fresh login to take effect.

Also, in order to start tracking one's own files in config, one may wish to tweak the .gitignore file in the config subdirectory, as it may be a poor idea to track everything. This may be a lot of unnecessary or sensitive files, and one should be careful as to what begins being tracked by git.

Application-Specific setup

Here are a handful of ways to start using the provided config files for various applications. These files are located in config.

VS Code

A list of extensions for Visual Studio Code is provided at config/code-extensions. Once VS Code has been installed, all extensions can be installed with:

cat config/code-extensions | xargs -n 1 code --install-extension

Optionally, keybindings and settings are also provided in config/Code/User/{keybindings.json, settings.json}. These can be linked to the same directory under $HOME/.config.

Vim / Nvim

To manage plugins for Vim / Nvim (though I use Nvim), install junegunn/vim-plug.

After linking the init.vim file under config/nvim, run:

:PlugInstall

Picom

While any picom source should work, the ibhagwan/picom fork supports rounded corners, which is included in my .conf file.

If using a distro like Arch Linux, Manjaro, or Artix Linux, the picom-ibhagwan-git package will work.

pacaur -S picom-ibhagwan-git

Acknowledgements

  • The repository unixorn/awesome-zsh-plugins provided an awesome starting point for finding tons of incredibly useful plugins.
  • The subreddit r/unixporn is exceptionally creative and provides many great dotfiles setups to take (rightfully attributed!) inspiration from.

Contributions

If ...

  • the directions are not working as expected
  • have some fun suggestions for zsh plugins you like
  • you have questions or suggestions on how to improve the setup or documentation

then email me!