slifty's dotfiles

These dotfiles contain my provisioning script for setting up fresh MacOS devices. It is a modified fork of the structured dotfiles of Zach Holman.

Instructions

This repository is designed to run on a completely clean machine, though that isn't necessarily a requirement. For best results, however, you should follow these instructions immediately after logging in and before manually installing anything else (except were asked to as part of the instructions).

Step 1: Preparation

Before running these dotfiles you'll need to do the following:

1. Install git (you can do this on a new MacOS machine by typing "git" in terminal and doing whatever Apple tells you to do)
2. Clone this repository to ~/.dotfiles

git clone https://github.com/slifty/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
git remote set-url origin [email protected]:slifty/dotfiles.git

3. Define local configuration settings

cd ~/.dotfiles
cp .env.template .env
cp local/config.json.example local/config.json
vi .env
vi local/config.json

4. Source the configuration settings

source .env

Step 2: Review everything

From here you may want to take a moment to review the dotfiles:

• Applications in the Brewfile that are no longer relevant?
• Applications in macos/install.sh that you don't use any more?
• Go through the macos/set-defaults.sh to see if you still like all of those settings.

Step 3: Intall the dotfiles

Finally you can run the bootstrap script which will install everything:

cd ~/.dotfiles && ./bootstrap.sh

You can re-run ./bootstrap.sh whenever you feel inspired.

Step 4: Setting MacOS Defaults (Optional)

I suppose every step is optional, but this one really is. You can set up a series of MacOS defaults by running:

cd ~/.dotfiles/macos && ./set-defaults.sh

Step 5: Manual setup

1. Register the shiny new SSH key that the script generated in appropriate places

• GitHub
• Any necessary servers

2. Install your GPG key:

# On the old machine...
gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format LONG
gpg --export --armor KEYID > private.key.asc

# Transfer the key securely

# On the new machine...
gpg -d private.key.asc > private.key
gpg --import private.key
rm private.key

Modifying the dotfiles

Organizaztion

Each folder is intended to cover an area of functionality of your computer (as Zach Holman said: topics). As you find new topics of functionality in your computing life you should just toss in a new root directory.

Special Topic Files

There are a few special files which exist in the root directory have a few special files.

• topic/*.zsh: Any files ending in .zsh get sourced into your environment. (Recommended prefixes: env, path, alias, hook)
• topic/*.symlink: Any file ending in *.symlink gets symlinked into your $HOME (with .symlink removed).
• topic/preinstall.sh: Any file named preinstall.sh is executed as part of bootstrap.sh but BEFORE brew is invoked.
• topic/install.sh: Any file named install.sh is executed as part of bootstrap.sh.

Special Root Files

There are also a few special files in the root directory:

• bin/: Anything in bin/ will get added to your $PATH and be made available everywhere.
• Brewfile: This is a list of applications for Homebrew Cask to install.