Van Viegen's dotfiles

What's this?

These are the configuration files and an install script that I like to use on every Linux computer I have access to. It features:

• The zsh shell, configured with a comfortable set of plugins using the lightweight zap plugin manager.
• Autostarting tmux terminal multiplexer. Common keys are: ctrl-a c (create window), ctrl-a n (next window), ctrl-a p (previous window), ctrl-a | (vertical split), ctrl-a - (horizontal split), ctrl-a <arrow> (move to split).
• helix, a modern modal editor (https://helix-editor.com/)
• br, a nice tool to navigate directories (https://github.com/Canop/broot)
• rg <term> for doing a ripgrep text search in the current directory and all subdirectories.
• Various other configurations and scripts you'll probably never need. :-)

Installing

On a Debian/Ubuntu/Manjaro/Arch box, run:

git clone https://github.com/vanviegen/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles && ~/.dotfiles/install

This will download the repository to ~/.dotfiles, and create symlinks from your home dir pointing at files in the ~/.dotfiles dir. It will also ask your OS package manager to install a couple of packages, if they aren't installed yet.

Updating

In ~/.dotfiles do a git pull followed by an ./install. The latter will cause new symlinks to be created and stale symlinks to be removed from your home dir. Additionally, it will install any newly required OS packages.

Forking

If you want to use these dotfiles as a base for your own CLI configurations, create a fork, and clone from your fork instead. If you're not me, the first thing you'll want to do is set your name and email address in git/gitconfig.symlink.

Customizing

Everything's built around topic areas. If you're adding a new area to your forked dotfiles — say, "Java" — you can simply add a java directory and put files in there. Anything with an extension of .symlink will get symlinked into $HOME (but with a . prefixed and without the .symlink suffix) when you run ~/.dotfiles/install. Double underscores (__) are replaced by a slash (/), allowing you to place symlinks inside directories. For example config__helix.symlink would be symlinked to ~/.config/helix.

The bin/ directory can be used to place random scripts, as it is added to your path.