Kyle Tolle's dotfiles

When recently configuring a new machine for development, I searched for a way to better handle dotfiles and came across an article on the Atlassian Developer blog called The best way to store your dotfiles: A bare Git repository. I set up my original machine based on the "Starting from scratch" section along with a few modifications because my setup was different and I ran into problems. What follows should be the steps needed to use these dotfiles on any further new machines.

Installation

dotfiles

• Go to your $HOME

cd $HOME

• Clone the dotfiles into a bare git repo.

git clone --bare git@github.com:kyletolle/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

• Define the config alias in the current shell scope so that it uses the dotfiles repo

alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

• Check out the actual content from the bare repo to your $HOME

config checkout

• Set the showUntrackedFiles flag to no on this local repo

config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

• Set up SSH

Outside the scope of this README for now, but follow the GitHub steps to generate a new SSH key, create your SSH config file, and copy the SSH key to GitHub.

• Set up the local repo to push changes to GitHub

config push --set-upstream origin master

MacVim

• Install MacVim through homebrew

brew install macvim

• Install Vundle as well as all the vim plugins

git clone https://github.com/VundleVim/Vundle.vim.git ~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
vim +PluginInstall! +qall

Powerline Fonts

Powerline fonts are used in the terminal and in vim's Airline plugin.

• Install the fonts and clean up the unneeded repo at the end

mkdir -p ~/code/github
cd $_
# clone
git clone https://github.com/powerline/fonts.git --depth=1 powerline-fonts
# install
cd powerline-fonts
./install.sh
# clean-up a bit
cd ..
rm -rf powerline-fonts

Command-T

Now that we've installed the Command-T plugin using Vundle, from up above, we need to finish installing Command-T.

• Install ruby via rbenv
  • Follow the steps at https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv
  • Check for most recent ruby version with rbenv install --list
  • Install the latest version of Ruby with rbenv install 3.1.1
    • At the time of writing this was 3.1.1, but use a more recent version from the list command above
• Open a new shell and make sure you're using that latest Ruby version
  • rbenv shell 3.1.1
• Compile the Command-T compiling the C extensions

cd ~/.vim/bundle/command-t/ruby/command-t/ext/command-t/
ruby extconf.rb
make

Note: We used to use the system Ruby, but that didn't seem to work this most recent time, so we're now using a Ruby from rbenv.

iTerm2

Install iTerm2.

• Use the zsh shell by default

chsh -s `which zsh`

iTerm2 includes the Solarized Light theme, so it's easy to select from the preferences.

Note: There's a default color scheme set in the .zshrc, but I don't actually use that for the colors.

Pyenv

The .zshrc assumes this is installed, so install it with

brew install pyenv

oh-my-zsh

oh-my-zsh helps manage our zsh config.

• Make sure submodules are set up from the dotfiles repo

cd ~
config submodule init
config submodule update
# Not sure if these two are necessary:
config pull --recurse-submodules
config submodule update --recursive

Create file for secret env vars

If a file exists at ~/.env.sh it'll be loaded by our .zshrc. Go ahead and create one with touch ~/.env.sh and start adding your secret env vars there.

Updating

dotfiles

Follow the approach from the blog post, using git commands, but substitute config for git.

config status
config diff
config add README.md
# Be prompted to add each hunk
config add -p .
# Remove files/folders if you accidentally staged them
config restore --staged .vscode
config commit -m "Add updates to README"
config push