dotfiles

Setup and configuration for my terminal based developer workflow (MacOS/Ubuntu):

• Zsh for a shell
• Homebrew for shell tools
• mise for programming language runtimes (except Python)
• uv for Python runtime and virtual environments
• Neovim for text editing
• Stow for dotfiles symlinking

This repo should be cloned into $HOME and set as $XDG_CONFIG_HOME. Many tools rely on setting this for the config stored in this repo to work. For other config that requires files in $HOME (such as $HOME/.bashrc) Stow is used to symlimk files.

You can setup your machine using commands in Makefile. Commonly setting up a machine involves:

• Installing packages with Homebrew
• Setting up symlinks with Stow
• Setting up tmux & Zsh
• Installing language runtimes with mise

Use

Ubuntu

Setup an Ubuntu machine:

$ make setup-ubuntu

This will also setup dependencies with Nix.

macOS

Setup a macOS machine:

$ make setup-macos

This will:

• Install Homebrew if not already installed
• Install all packages from the Brewfile
• Setup dotfiles with Stow
• Configure tmux, Zsh, and fzf

Python

Install uv and setup a global Python installation in a virtual environment:

$ make setup-python

Components

Use GNU Stow to symlink dotfiles for Bash, Zsh, Tmux and Git:

$ make dotfiles

Note: The OS variable is automatically set by the setup-macos and setup-ubuntu targets. For manual dotfiles setup, you can export the OS variable first:

$ export OS=macos && make dotfiles

Valid values for OS are macos, wsl or windows.

A script ./stow/setup.sh will attempt to bootstrap Stow if it's not already available. Stow bootstrapping is not setup for Windows because Windows is awful.

You can run the setup without bootstrapping Stow with:

$ make dotfiles OS=macos -o setup-stow

Homebrew

Install packages with Homebrew from the Brewfile:

$ make brew-pkgs

This will:

• Install Homebrew if not already installed
• Install all packages defined in ./brew/Brewfile

mise

mise is used for managing programming language runtime versions (Python, Node.js, Go, etc.). It's automatically installed via the Brewfile and activated in Zsh via an eval.

Neovim

Neovim config is in ./nvim. To use the Neovim setup, put this folder into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

I use Lazy for package management in Neovim - it will install packages when you first open the editor.

Shell Customization

The s command opens a fuzzy file finder (fzf) to search and open files in $EDITOR. Run s in any directory, or pass a path like s ~/projects. Supports multi-select with Tab.

Lot's of aliases - see scripts/aliases.sh.

Getting Kitty to Play Nice on macOS

Had weird issue with the first execution of Kitty not loading the kitty.conf correctly - fixed with:

# ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setenv.XDG_CONFIG_HOME.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>setenv.XDG_CONFIG_HOME</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>sh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>launchctl setenv XDG_CONFIG_HOME $HOME/dotfiles</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setenv.XDG_CONFIG_HOME.plist