This repo is forked. Please read below to find the original introduction by Michael J. Smalley. It shows how to store, replicate and version control dotfiles.
In this instance, these dotfiles are used to customize user settings on Linux/ MacOS for zsh-the Z shell. If you want to read more about dotfiles, this blog post provides a more detailed introduction.
Similar to the simple example here, there are other tools to manage dotfiles--for example, Yet Another Dotfiles Manager.
This repository includes all some of my custom dotfiles. They should be cloned to your a user's home directory so that the path is ~/dotfiles/. The included setup script creates symlinks from your the home directory to the files which are located in ~/dotfiles/.
The setup script is somewhat smart enough to back up your the existing dotfiles into a ~/dotfiles_old/ directory if you already have any dotfiles of the same name as the dotfile symlinks being created in your the home directory.
I also sometimes prefer zsh as my shell of choice. As such On top, the setup script will also clone the oh-my-zsh repository from my GitHub. It then checks to see if zsh is installed. If zsh is installed, and it is not already configured as the default shell, the setup script will execute a chsh -s $(which zsh). This changes the default shell to zsh, and takes effect as soon as a new zsh is spawned or on next login.
So, to recap, the install script will:
- Back up any existing dotfiles in your home directory to
~/dotfiles_old/ - Create symlinks to the dotfiles in
~/dotfiles/in your home directory - Clone the
oh-my-zshrepository from GitHub (for use withzsh) - Check to see if
zshis installed, if it isn't, try to install it. - If zsh is installed, run a
chsh -sto set it as the default shell.
git clone https://github.com/yashas-vaidya/dotfiles ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
./makesymlinks.sh