Dotfiles

A repository of personal machine configuration files to easily share the same configuration between multiple machines and quickly setup new machines.

Features

• Minimal: Redundant information is removed to reduce the mental effort of finding relevant information (e.g. the prompt only shows the current path and not the username and hostname.)
• Soft colors: Soft colors are used to make it easy to distinguish between different things without over-stimulating the brain.
• Instant navigation: Navigation is as fast as can be at all levels:
  1. Most used applications have shortcuts (e.g. super + a switches to the write workspace with a terminal in i3, super + s switches to the read web workspace with a browser in i3.) No need to search using alt + tab or the activity overview.
  2. Inside the terminal most used sessions have shortcuts (e.g. tmux prefix + N switches to the notes session in tmux.) Inside the browser most used tabs are have shortcuts (e.g. ctrl + 1 for tab marked first.)
  3. Inside the editor most used files have shortcuts (ctrl + h switches to file marked as first in nvim.)
• Machine independent: Reasonable defaults are kept to make working on other machines almost as smooth as personal ones.

Usage Examples

Copy output of terminal command into another terminal

Copy output of command to system clipboard without newlines by piping it into the c alias:

pwd | c

Paste output of command into other terminal with ctrl + shift + v.

Copy text from tmux in the read workspace to the browser in the read web workspace

Enter copy mode with prefix + [.

Use vim motions to go to the desired text.

Select text using visual mode with V to select whole line or v to select characters within a line.

Copy the text into the system clipboard with y.

Go to read web workspace with super + 2.

Paste the text into the browser with ctrl + v.

Installation

Add the dotfiles alias to .bashrc:

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

Ignore the repo folder:

echo ".dotfiles" >> .gitignore

Clone dotfiles into a bare repository in a "dot" folder of your $HOME:

git clone --bare [email protected]:skeptic-spriggan/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

Checkout the content from the bare repository to your $HOME:

dgit checkout

The step above might fail with a message like:

error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
    .bashrc
    .gitignore
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

This is because your $HOME folder might already have some stock configuration files which would be overwritten by Git. The solution is simple: back up the files if you care about them, remove them if you don't care.

Re-run the check out if you had problems:

dgit checkout

Set the flag showUntrackedFiles to no on this specific (local) repository:

dgit config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Set a user name and email in the repo to enable development:

dgit config --local user.name = "Skeptic Spriggan"
dgit config --local user.email = "[email protected]"

Set an alias to smoothen development:

echo "[alias]" >> $HOME/.dotfiles/config
echo "    push = push origin master" >> $HOME/.dotfiles/config

Create profile for new machine:

touch .profile_$HOSTNAME

Install cronjobs:

crontab -l | cat - <(echo "PATH=\"$PATH\"") \
  <(echo "ENV_VARS=\"$HOME/.profile_$HOSTNAME\"") \
  <(echo '') \
  <(echo "0 * * * * . \$ENV_VARS && sync-repos.sh 2>&1 $HOME/logs/sync-repos.log") \
  <(echo "0 */6 * * * . \$ENV_VARS && archive-past-calendar-events.sh 2>&1 $HOME/logs/archive-past-calendar-events.log") \
  <(echo "0 */2 * * * . \$ENV_VARS && archive-done-tasks.sh 2>&1 $HOME/logs/archive-done-tasks.log") \
  | crontab -

Enable logging for debugging purposes:

Uncomment the following line in '/etc/rsyslog.d/50-default.conf' to log crontab messages to /var/log/cron.log:

cron.*                         /var/log/cron.log

Restart rsyslog and cron:

sudo service rsyslog restart
sudo service cron restart

Tools

Text Editor

The most important text editor assessment parameter is performance. The editor should boot almost instantly and the input latency must be very low. If it is not performant it breaks the workflow and leads to frustration.

Neovim is used as main text editor because of its customizability and performance.

Notepad++ is fast, but it is platform dependent, less customizable, and does not support vim motions.

Vim is used on remote servers. It is not used as main editor because it is harder to customize. Neovim is a fork which uses a well documented and simple scripting language called Lua instead of the arcane Vimscript. It also has native LSP client support.

Visual Studio Code supports LSP clients, supports some vim motions, but is slow to start and react. The built-in terminal sometimes sends different commands than what is typed due to the lagging. Furthermore, the experience feels bloated instead of minimal. The built-in terminal is redundant. It is only helpful for people who cannot quickly switch between the editor and terminal.