dotfiles

What is it?

This repo contains a collection of so-called 'dotfiles'. Dotfiles are configuration files, usually prefixed by a dot, that are mostly used on Unix-like systems. This repository contains dotfiles for several things that I personally use on a day to day basis.

Disclaimer

These dotfiles are subject to change. Feel free to clone or fork it. But I am in no way responsible for this setup not working on your machine, breaking your current setup or otherwise harming your existence. Also note that these dotfiles are personalized so make sure to replace my name with your own if you decide to use it.

Automatic setup

curl -Lks https://tinyurl.com/linuxspecialist-dotfiles | bash

The automatic setup does it the way I like it and the setup can be used for both Linux (Debian) and MacOS.

Manual setup

Add the dotfiles alias to .zshrc

echo "dotfiles='$(which git) --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'" >> ~/.zshrc

Add .dotfiles to .gitignore to prevent recursion problems

echo ".dotfiles" >> ~/.gitignore

Clone the dotfiles into a bare repository

git clone --bare https://github.com/dsteenstra/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

Define dotfiles alias in current shell

dotfiles='$(which git) --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

Create backup directory for original files

mkdir -p .dotfiles-backup && \

Move original dotfiles into backup directory

dotfiles checkout 2>&1 | egrep "\s+\." | awk {'print $1'} | xargs -I{} mv {} .dotfiles-backup/{}

Checkout the actual dotfiles from remote git repository

dotfiles checkout

Do not show untracked files

dotfiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

dotenv (~/.env)

This repository does not include a dotenv directory. because I'm not about to share my private credentials and environment settings. One could create a directory structure like this:

.env
├── credentials
│   └── <org>
│       └── <project>.env
├── global.env
├── machines
│   ├── <hostname>.env
│   └── <othermachine>.env
├── projects
│   ├── <project1>.env
│   ├── <project2>.env
│   └── <project3>.env

global.env is always loaded and contains generic environment variables (like LANG, EDITOR etc..)
machines/hostname.env is loaded depending on the local hostname (duh) for machine specific variables.
projects/projectname.env could be loaded by direnv (.envrc) by adding load_env project/project1
credentials/org/project.env could also be loaded by direnv or by chaining it into a project.env file.

dotenv sharing

The dotenv directory can be shared across your devices in many ways. I personally prefer pushing it into a private git repository and have the files encrypted with git-crypt. It basically doesn't matter how you share dotenv as long as its easily updated and (obviously) secured.