/dotfiles

:wrench: .files, including ~/.macos — sensible hacker defaults for macOS

Primary LanguageShellMIT LicenseMIT

Kai's dotfiles

Screenshot of my shell prompt

Overview

This repository contains my personal dotfiles, forked from Mathias Bynens' dotfiles repository. Here's what differs from the original:

  • Zsh is used instead of Bash
  • bootstrap.sh symlinks instead of copying files
  • Rectangle is used instead of Spectacle
  • macOS defaults/aliases/functions are different
  • Rust cli alternatives (exa, bat, ripgrep, etc.) are preferred over GNU coreutils

Installation

Warning: If you want to give these dotfiles a try, you should first fork this repository, review the code, and remove things you don’t want or need. Don’t blindly use my settings unless you know what that entails. Use at your own risk!

git clone git@github.com:li-kai/dotfiles.git && cd dotfiles && ./bootstrap.sh

To update, cd into your local dotfiles repository and then:

./bootstrap.sh

To update later on, just run that command again.

Specify the $PATH

If ~/.path exists, it will be sourced along with the other files, before any feature testing (such as detecting which version of ls is being used) takes place.

Here’s an example ~/.path file that adds /usr/local/bin to the $PATH:

export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Add custom commands without creating a new fork

If ~/.extra exists, it will be sourced along with the other files. You can use this to add a few custom commands without the need to fork this entire repository, or to add commands you don’t want to commit to a public repository.

Your ~/.extra should look something like this:

# Git credentials
# Not in the repository, to prevent people from accidentally committing under my name
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Mathias Bynens"
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
git config --global user.name "$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="mathias@mailinator.com"
GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL="$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL"
git config --global user.email "$GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL"

You could also use ~/.extra to override settings, functions and aliases from my dotfiles repository. It’s probably better to fork this repository instead, though.

Sensible macOS defaults

When setting up a new Mac, you may want to set some sensible macOS defaults:

./.macos/settings.sh

Install Homebrew formulae

When setting up a new Mac, you may want to install some common Homebrew formulae (after installing Homebrew, of course):

./.macos/brew.sh

Some of the functionality of these dotfiles depends on formulae installed by brew.sh. If you don’t plan to run brew.sh, you should look carefully through the script and manually install any particularly important ones. A good example is Bash/Git completion: the dotfiles use a special version from Homebrew.

Thanks to…