Pristine

A place to store my shell setup and dotfiles. This repo should be all I need to setup a new or cloned box.

Install

1. Install Homebrew

2. Clone this repo to a suitable local location. That could be directly under $HOME or some other, less prominent, location.

3. Run this repo's setup script:

   ./setup.sh

Notes & Bugfixes

• Add any required language specific modules to .zpreztorc manually (for now), i.e.

  .
  .
  .
  # Set the Prezto modules to load (browse modules).
  # The order matters.
  zstyle ':prezto:load' pmodule \
  'environment' \
  .
  .
  .
  'prompt'  \
  'git'     \
  'python'  \
  'node'    \
  'ruby'

• There is an issue where tmux modifies $PATH when using zsh!

  Solution: Modify /etc/zprofile to the following:

  # system-wide environment settings for zsh(1)
  if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
    if [ -z "$TMUX" ]; then
      eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
    fi
  fi

Dotfiles

This repo's setup command installs stow, which is a a symlink farm manager. I use it to backup dotfiles and place them in version control.

It's important to distinguish between dotfiles and 'hidden working/cache files/directories' that just happen to be sitting in the $HOME directory. The later should not be placed in version control! For example, whilst the dotfile .tmux.conf holds customizable configuration data for a tmux install (and may therefore be recorded and monitored in version control), its related .tmux directory is used as a cache and will simply be populated to the requirements of the .tmux.conf configuration file at runtime.

• Having established an app's actual dotfile(s), in order to use stow:

  1. Create a directory in this repo's dotfiles directory, named after the dotfile's application:

     # i.e.                      # e.g.
     dotfiles/appname/           dotfiles/tmux/

  2. Move the dotfile(s) from the $HOME directory to the directory created in step 1

  3. Run the following command to get stow to symlink the dotfile(s) from the new location (in version control)!

     stow appname

  4. Add the appname to bin/dotfiles.sh to have its dotfile(s) automatically installed from version control whenever a new setup is run.

  5. git commit, etc

• To remove 'stow control' for an application's dotfile(s):

  1. Run the following command to remove associated symlink(s)

     stow --delete appname

  2. Move the file(s) from the application's corresponding directory (in version control - see step 1 above) back to their original location, i.e the $HOME directory

Note: stow will never overwrite a file that it hasn't previously created, or that already exists, so it's fairly safe to rerun any of the following commands at any time:

# for dotfile(s) in version control already...
#
# to `stow` a single application's dotfile(s)
# (use the -v flag to see what's going on)
stow -v appname
# or for multiple applications
stow -v --stow app1name [app2name [app3name]]

# to remove from stow, just use the --delete flag
stow -v --delete app1name [app2name [app3name]]
# don't forget to copy/move the dotfile(s) back to $HOME manually!

Inspiration

• Daniel Miessler: configuration script for bootstrapping a new box
• Xero: dotfile solution