Dotfiles

Version control for my dotfiles.

You can use this repo in one of two ways:

Check out my dotfiles for inspiration.
Clone this repo into your home directory and run the bootstrap.sh script to set up symlinks to these dotfiles. This way you can version control just the dotfiles

Why (and how)

Dotfiles allow you to customize your shell. When setting up a new machine it's nice to have all that config come with you. Hence we want to version control our dotfiles. The challenge is that these dotfiles are expected to live in a certain place on your machine. Typically your dotfiles have the following structure:

~/
  .bashrc
  .zshrc
  .gitconfig
  .tmux.conf
  ...

Now we can't reasonably version control all of ~! There's a neat trick that gets around this. Clone dotfiles to ~ and use symlinks to reference them.

~/
  .bashrc -> ~/dotfiles/.bashrc
  ...
  dotfiles/
    .bashrc
    ...

This will redirect all requests for ~/.bashrc to ~/dotfiles/.bashrc (and so on), meaning that things will still work as expected. And now we can version control ~/dotfiles and the problem is solved.

Usage

Setting up a new machine for the first time:

# set up ssh
ssh-keygen -t rsa
less ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

#! manual step:
# copy ssh id to your github account

cd ~
git clone git@github.com:aminsaied/dotfiles.git
cd dotfiles
bash bootstrap.sh

Note. Running sudo bash bootstrap.sh will treat ~ directory as /root, not /home/<user>.

SSH Agent

Goal: Use ssh-agent to forward ssh keys from my client (e.g. my laptop) to the server (e.g. some azure vm). This allows you to interact with github using your client ssh keys from the remote.

On client:

My .zshrc starts up an agent and adds the ssh keys. Note: since I am using WSL I need to do this manually for each new shell, hence putting this in .zshrc. TODO: add this to .profile.

For new VM:

Configure the VM in ~/.ssh/config including ForwardAgent yes to enable agent forwarding.
```
Host amsaied-ci
  HostName 52.250.36.122
  User azureuser
  Port 50000
  ForwardAgent yes
```
Note. Alternatively, use -A flag with ssh: ssh -A user@example

oh-my-zsh plugins

zsh-syntax-highlighting

You'll need this repo cloned into oh-my-zsh's plugins directory e.g. like this:

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

Note - you may get a security warning about plugins. The warning will give you some options to address this.

broot

Broot is better way to navigate directories from your shell.

Download broot tool from here. There are a number of download options, do this one for Ubuntu on WSL:

Download from pre-compiled binaries (target=Linux)
This will place the executable file broot somewhere like C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\Downloads\broot

Move this to /usr/local/bin with

sudo mv /mnt/c/Users/<USER-NAME>/Downloads/broot /usr/local/bin/

Set broot to be executable with chmod +x broot
Finally, attempt to run broot and you will be met with the prompt to download https://github.com/Canop/broot. In particular, this will write the br shell function in /home/<user>/.local/share/broot/launcher/bash/1 which is referenced in the .zshrc config.

Note. WSL has a keybinding assigned to Alt+Enter (toggles fullscreen) which conflicts with a vital command in broot: change directory. You can delete the WSL keybinding from settings > actions.

Conda environments

Install / set up miniconda:

wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
chmod +x Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
./Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh
rm -f Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

You'll be prompted to answer some questions as part of the Miniconda install process. Nothing too taxing, I promise ;-)

Windows Terminal Settings

I've included my settings for Windows Terminal. Unfortunately there is no magic syncing here, just meant for inspiration. You can edit your settings directly from the windows terminal by selecting "Settings" from the drop down menu.

Vim

YouCompleteMe

To get YCM plugin installed need to run:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake

Then change directory to the YCM plugin and run the install script

cd ~/.vim/plugged/YouCompleteMe
python3 install.py

TODO: add this to the bootstrap.sh script.

Setup on WSL

First time running on WSL:

Clone dotfiles repo to ~/repos directory
Run bootstrap.sh: cd to ~/repos/dotfiles and run bash bootstrap.sh to create sym links
Install broot (see above)
Install miniconda3 (see above)
Install dotnet core with sudo apt-get install -y dotnet-runtime-2.1 (more details: here)
Install azure cli (see docs)