Okeanos’ dotfiles

This is a Windows port of my dotfiles for macOS.

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!

Warning: Docker Desktop is installed as part of the setup. Because it defaults to the WSL 2 backend you have to make sure to install that before everything else.

Docker & Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2)

You have to manually install the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2) because it requires a restart of the system and some manual intervention.

Note: Enabling WSL 2 means that software such as VirtualBox or VMWare Workstation no longer works as expected. Windows only allows a single hypervisor at a time and WSL 2 is Hyper-V based and prevents running VirtualBox/VMWare Workstation. Workarounds for VirtualBox and VMWare exist, however, suffer from extreme performance penalties.

If you want a custom WSL 2 instance (different from the Docker backend) check the available distributions and install one:

wsl --list --online
wsl --install --distribution Ubuntu-22.04

Getting Started

Before you begin have a look at the code signing instructions.

1. Manually download winget.ps1 and all other winget_* files into the same location
2. Update the winget.ps1 to only install software you actually want and sign it
3. Go through the winget_* files and modify them as necessary because they will be used to source the installation options for e.g. Git to allow unattended installation.
4. Execute winget.ps1 from your PowerShell (needs elevated/administrator permissions)
5. You can now clone the repository wherever you want (I like to keep it in %UserProfile%\Workspace\dotfiles)
6. You can now bootstrap.ps1 your system (needs elevated/administrator permissions) after signing it
7. Optionally and after a careful review you can now run windows.ps1 (needs elevated/administrator permissions and signing obviously)

If you decide not to run the windows.ps1 script please make sure to set the following User Environment Variables in Windows:

• HOME : %UserProfile%
  • this will prevent Git Bash supplied tools from arbitrarily deciding on their own where ~, i.e. ${HOME} is
• USER : "your username"
  • this will prevent Git Bash supplied tools (such as SSH) from arbitrarily deciding on their own what to call you

Installing Software (winget.ps1)

When setting up a new PC, you need to install some common Windows Packages (after making sure that winget is installed, of course) for this repository to work as expected:

.\winget.ps1

Some functionality of these dotfiles depends on packages installed by winget.ps1. If you don’t plan to use winget, you should look carefully through the winget.ps1 and related config files and manually install any particularly important tools manually. Good examples of these are Windows Terminal and Git Bash.

Lightweight Editor

The aforementioned winget.ps1 includes Visual Studio Code ("VSCode"), i.e. the nonfree, proprietary Microsoft product that includes telemetry etc., as a lightweight GUI editor. Either disable telemetry manually if you are bothered by it (e.g. as described in this gist) or switch to another editor, e.g.:

• VSCodium
• NotePad++
• Sublime Text
• …

Manual Installation Caveats

If you do not want to run the winget.ps1 script follow the installation instructions for the following software and take note of the caveats below:

• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL 2)
• Windows Terminal
• Git Bash
  • Select Components
    • Uncheck the box for the Windows Explorer Integration (it doesn't work with Windows Terminal integration)
    • Check the box for the Windows Terminal Fragment
  • When prompted use the Windows Secure Channel library instead of the bundled certficates (allows using the Windows certificate store for system-wide same behavior when it comes to self-signed certificates)
  • When prompted select "checkout as-is, commit as-is" (less magic and tools can be correctly configured to use Unix style line endings nowadays)
• A password manager, either:
  • KeePass
    • KeeAgent for SSH support (supports Windows native OpenSSH & Git Bash bundled OpenSSH in parallel)
  • KeePassXC (built in SSH Agent Support, different from KeeAgent; only supports Windows native OpenSSH)
    • Chrome/Chromium Extension
    • Firefox Extension
  • 1Password
    • SSH Agent Setup

Once you installed all of this and configured the software to your liking you can now clone the repository wherever you want (I like to keep it in %UserProfile%/Workspace/dotfiles). Afterwards you can run the bootstrapper from your PowerShell as described below.

The bootstrap script (bootstrap.ps1)

The bootstrapper script will pull in the latest version and copy the files to your home folder. Run it from your Powershell.

cd "$( $ENV:UserProfile )\Workspace\dotfiles"; .\bootstrap.ps1

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

cd "$( $ENV:UserProfile )\Workspace\dotfiles"; .\bootstrap.ps1

Java Installation

The Maven Toolchains file assumes that the Adoptium Java versions are used. Additionally, the target folder has to be modified during the installation to remove any patch and minor version information, i.e.:

C:\Program Files\Eclipse Adoptium\jdk-17.0.1.12-hotspot becomes C:\Program Files\Eclipse Adoptium\temurin-17.jdk (in line with macOS and Linux naming schemes)

This has to be done explicitly (see adoptium/installer#422 for details) but can be automated as shown in winget.ps1.

Sensible Windows defaults (windows.ps1)

When setting up a new PC, you may want to set some sensible Windows defaults. Please note that you really ought to read the contents of the windows.ps1 script very, very carefully because it changes a large number of system settings. You can apply it by invoking it like this:

cd "$( $ENV:UserProfile )\Workspace\dotfiles"; .\windows.ps1

Modifying the $PATH

Please note that the standard dotfiles already modify your Git Bash path in two ways:

• They add /c/Windows/System32/OpenSSH to force all programs to use the Windows supplied version of OpenSSH (to make it compatible with KeePassXC by default)
• They add $HOME/bin as a place where you can put binaries such as jq to make them easily accessible

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.

An example of ~/.extra by the original author of this repository looks something like this:

# Git credentials
# Not in the repository, to prevent people from accidentally committing under my name
GIT_AUTHOR_NAME="Foo Bar"
GIT_COMMITTER_NAME="$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
git config --global user.name "$GIT_AUTHOR_NAME"
GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL="foo.bar@example.org"
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.

Unlinking / Uninstalling

If you want to unlink (uninstall) all dotfiles managed by this repository you can use the unlink.sh script. This operation is non-destructive and will only remove the symlinks from your %UserProfile% directory. Any customizations, e.g. .extra or .gituser, that were created by you will stay in %UserProfile%. You can restore the dotfiles again by running bootstrap.ps1.

cd "$( $ENV:UserProfile )\Workspace\dotfiles"; .\unlink.ps1

If you want to unlink particular dotfiles (e.g. for vim) you'll have to manually delete the files from your %UserProfile% directory because there is no stow for Windows 😕.

SSH Setup

Please read SSH Setup for details and options concerning SSH on Windows including SSH Agent options.

Thanks to…

• Mathias Bynens and whose dotfiles these are largely derived from
• Tim Schneider and his dotfiles and fyWin scripts
• Rohan Cragg and his Bash Shell on Windows guide
• Maarten Billemont's Bash Guide
• Mateusz Łoskot and his wsl-config
• June Castillote for providing additional insights into PowerShell script signing