Dotfiles (custom)

Uses zsh + oh-my-posh for the default shell
Installs a ton of stuff you always install anyway
Adds features for working in WSL/WSL2 under Windows
Sets a bunch of normal defaults for today's code workflows where we get nice things like GUIs
Based on the battle tested dotfiles scripts of "Cowboy" Ben Alman with a few years of divergent evolution

Tool Install Priority

Tools that are installed are either versioned and need shimming in order to switch easily, or are unversioned and we only install the latest version of a tool.

versioned tools are installed as an asdf plugin
unversioned (and difficult to version) tools are installed as a Homebrew / Linuxbrew
unversioned and OS-specific tools are installed using the OS's native package manager (init/20_ubuntu_apt.sh and init/31_osx_core_homebrew.sh)

There's a preference to avoid language-specific shims such as rbenv or volta. It's not that these tools are bad, but rather having a single shiming tool reduces cognitive load.

How the "dotfiles" command works

When [dotfiles][dotfiles] is run for the first time, it does a few things:

In Ubuntu, Git is installed if necessary via APT (it's already there in OSX).
This repo is cloned into your user directory, under ~/.dotfiles.
Files in /copy are copied into ~/. (read more)
Files in /link are symlinked into ~/. (read more)
You are prompted to choose scripts in /init to be executed. The installer attempts to only select relevant scripts, based on the detected OS and the script filename. Your chosen init scripts are executed (in alphanumeric order, hence the funky names). (read more)

On subsequent runs, step 1 is skipped, step 2 just updates the already-existing repo, and step 5 remembers what you selected the last time. The other steps are the same.

Other subdirectories

The /backups directory gets created when necessary. Any files in ~/ that would have been overwritten by files in /copy or /link get backed up there.
The /bin directory contains executable shell scripts (including the [dotfiles][dotfiles] script) and symlinks to executable shell scripts. This directory is added to the path.
The /caches directory contains cached files, used by some scripts or functions.
The /config directory just exists. If a config file doesn't need to go in ~/, reference it from the /config directory instead and save some linking headaches.
The /source directory contains files that are sourced whenever a new shell is opened (in alphanumeric order, hence the funky names).
The /test directory contains unit tests for especially complicated bash functions.
The /vendor directory contains third-party libraries.

The "copy" step

Any file or directory in the /copy subdirectory will be copied into ~/. Any file that needs to be modified with personal information (like copy/.gitconfig which contains an email address and private key) should be copied into ~/. Because the file you'll be editing is no longer in ~/.dotfiles, it's less likely to be accidentally committed into your public dotfiles repo.

The "link" step

Any file or directory in the /link subdirectory gets symlinked into ~/ with ln -s. Edit one or the other, and you change the file in both places. Don't link files containing sensitive data, or you might accidentally commit that data! If you're linking a directory that might contain sensitive data (like ~/.ssh) add the sensitive files to your .gitignore file!

There is a dedicated .gitignore for the .config directory that ignores almost everything by default, as most tools put their config into ~/.config/<app>/*.

The "init" step

Scripts in the /init subdirectory will be executed. A whole bunch of things will be installed, but only if they aren't already.

Installation

There's a lot of stuff that requires admin access via sudo, so be warned that you might need to enter your password here or there.

Ubuntu

bash -c "$(wget -qO- https://raw.github.com/jakobo/dotfiles/main/bin/dotfiles)" && source ~/.zshrc

The Ubuntu setup works in WSL in addition to traditional Ubuntu-land. Either way, you should at least update/upgrade APT with sudo apt-get -qq update && sudo apt-get -qq dist-upgrade first.

Tested in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

macOS

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/jakobo/dotfiles/main/bin/dotfiles)" && source ~/.zshrc

You need to have XCode or, at the very minimum, the XCode Command Line Tools, which are available as a much smaller download.

The easiest way to install the XCode Command Line Tools in OSX 10.9+ is to open up a terminal, type xcode-select --install and follow the prompts.

Tested in OSX 10.15

Aliases and Functions

To keep things easy, the ~/.zshrc file is extremely simple, and should never need to be modified. Instead, add your aliases, functions, settings, etc into one of the files in the source subdirectory, or add a new file. They're all automatically sourced when a new shell is opened. Take a look, I have a lot of aliases and functions.

Scripts

In addition to the aforementioned [dotfiles][dotfiles] script, there are a few other bin scripts.

[dotfiles][dotfiles] - (re)initialize dotfiles. It might ask for your password (for sudo).
src - (re)source all files in /source directory
Look through the bin subdirectory for a few more.