My OS X / Ubuntu dotfiles.

I've been using bash on-and-off for a long time (since Slackware Linux was distributed on 1.44MB floppy disks). In all that time, every time I've set up a new Linux or OS X machine, I've copied over my .bashrc file and my ~/bin folder to each machine manually. And I've never done a very good job of actually maintaining these files. It's been a total mess.

I finally decided that I wanted to be able to execute a single command to "bootstrap" a new system to pull down all of my dotfiles and configs, as well as install all the tools I commonly use. In addition, I wanted to be able to re-execute that command at any time to synchronize anything that might have changed. Finally, I wanted to make it easy to re-integrate changes back in, so that other machines could be updated.

That command is ~/bin/dotfiles, and this is my "dotfiles" Git repo.

It's really not very complicated. When dotfiles is run, it does a few things:

1. Git is installed if necessary, via APT or Homebrew (which is installed if necessary).
2. This repo is cloned into the ~/.dotfiles directory (or updated if it already exists).
3. Files in init are executed (in alphanumeric order).
4. Files in copy are copied into ~/.
5. Files in link are linked into ~/.

Note:

• The backups folder only gets created when necessary. Any files in ~/ that would have been overwritten by copy or link get backed up there.
• Files in bin are executable shell scripts (~/.dotfiles/bin is added into the path).
• Files in source get sourced whenever a new shell is opened (in alphanumeric order)..
• Files in conf just sit there. If a config file doesn't need to go in ~/, put it in there.
• Files in caches are cached files, only used by some scripts. This folder will only be created if necessary.

Notes:

• You need to be an administrator (for sudo).
• You need to have installed XCode Command Line Tools, which are available as a separate, optional (and much smaller) download from XCode.

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/colingourlay/dotfiles/master/bin/dotfiles)" && source ~/.bashrc

Notes:

• You need to be an administrator (for sudo).
• If APT hasn't been updated or upgraded recently, it will probably be a few minutes before you see anything.

sudo apt-get -qq update && sudo apt-get -qq upgrade && sudo apt-get -qq install curl && echo &&
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/colingourlay/dotfiles/master/bin/dotfiles)" && source ~/.bashrc

These things will be installed, but only if they aren't already.

• Homebrew
  • git
  • tree
  • sl
  • lesspipe
  • id3tool
  • nmap
  • git-extras
  • htop-osx
  • apple-gcc42 (via homebrew-dupes)

• APT
  • build-essential
  • libssl-dev
  • git-core
  • tree
  • sl
  • id3tool
  • nmap
  • telnet
  • htop

• Nave
  • Npm (latest stable)
    • Grunt
    • JSHint
    • Uglify-JS
• Rbenv
  • Ruby 1.9.3-p194 (default)
  • Ruby 1.9.2-p290 (default)
• Ruby Gems
  • bundler
  • awesome_print
  • interactive_editor

Any file in the copy subdirectory will be copied into ~/. Any file that needs to be modified with personal information (like .gitconfig which contains an email address and private key) should be copied into ~/. Because the file you'll be editing is no longer in ~/.dotfiles, it's less likely to be accidentally committed into your public dotfiles repo.

Any file in the link subdirectory gets symbolically linked with ln -s into ~/. Edit these, and you change the file in the repo. Don't link files containing sensitive data, or you might accidentally commit that data!

To keep things easy, the ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile files are extremely simple, and should never need to be modified. Instead, add your aliases, functions, settings, etc into one of the files in the source subdirectory, or add a new file. They're all automatically sourced when a new shell is opened. Take a look, I have a lot of aliases and functions. I even have a fancy prompt that shows the current directory, time and current git/svn repo status.

In addition to the aforementioned dotfiles script, there are a few other bash scripts. This includes ack, which is a git submodule.

• dotfiles - (re)initialize dotfiles. It might ask for your password (for sudo).
• src - (re)source all files in source directory
• Look through the bin subdirectory for a few more.

I think my bash prompt is awesome. It shows git and svn repo status, a timestamp, error exit codes, and even changes color depending on how you've logged in.

Git repos display as [branch:flags] where flags are:

? untracked files
! changed (but unstaged) files
+ staged files

SVN repos display as [rev1:rev2] where rev1 and rev2 are:

rev1 last changed revision
rev2 revision

Check it out:

https://github.com/gf3/dotfiles
https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles https://github.com/cowboy/dotfiles

Copyright (c) 2012 "Cowboy" Ben Alman & 2013 Colin Gourlay Licensed under the MIT license.
http://benalman.com/about/license/