You can clone the repository wherever you want. (I like to keep it in ~/Projects/dotfiles
, with ~/dotfiles
as a symlink.) The bootstrapper script will pull in the latest version and copy the files to your home folder.
git clone https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles.git && cd dotfiles && source bootstrap.sh
To update, cd
into your local dotfiles
repository and then:
source bootstrap.sh
Alternatively, to update while avoiding the confirmation prompt:
set -- -f; source bootstrap.sh
To install these dotfiles without Git:
cd; curl -#L https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/tarball/main | tar -xzv --strip-components 1 --exclude={README.md,bootstrap.sh,.osx,LICENSE-MIT.txt}
To update later on, just run that command again.
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"
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.
My ~/.extra
looks 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.
When setting up a new Mac, you may want to set some sensible macOS defaults:
./.macos
When setting up a new Mac, you may want to install some common Homebrew formulae (after installing Homebrew, of course):
./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.