Single command:

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tzhouhc/dotfiles/refs/heads/main/.dotfiles/fetch.sh && bash fetch.sh

This will handle all of:

• Downloading bootstrap script
• Check and set user password if unset
• Install necessary software for the bootstrapping itself
• Install all actual config files and tools
• Setup user login shell

git clone --bare [email protected]:tzhouhc/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles.git
alias dfg='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles.git --work-tree=$HOME'
dfg checkout -f
dfg submodule update --init --recursive
cp $HOME/.dotfiles/lib/ref_git_config $HOME/.dotfiles.git/config

On MacOS the script should install Chrome and Wezterm for you, so this can be done directly on the native terminal -- both zsh and git are available out of the box, or the system will prompt you to install them anyway.

In the config file in the bare repo dir, ensure that the submodule has ignore = all. This makes it so that git does not care about the versioning of the submodule.

This should be handled by default via the reference git config file.

Possible check this link.

These steps are covered in the automatic fetching script. I leave them here purely for reference.

If running on AWS/GCP, first set password for the default user:

sudo su -
passwd ubuntu

Then change the default shell:

chsh

Then proceed with installation (recommend doing so inside of tmux):

~/.dotfiles/install.sh

Latest zsh configurations require Nerd Fonts support at major version 3. Powerline symbols is also required. Use of fonts like Cascadia Code NF or JetBrains Nerd Font Mono is recommended.

The main installation script requires sudo access to run the initial installation of tools; specific installations using cargo or homebrew do not.

A number of custom scripts are available in .dotfiles/sbin; this is automatically added to the $PATH env var as part of the zshrc.

A justfile is provided for a couple of frequently used commands.

The templates dir under xdg_configs stores what are essentially project templates that can be used to quickly replicate a standard setup in a directory by using the tmpl script.

For each template directory, there are usually a number of files that will be copied over to the new project directory upon invocation of the command. However, there are also a couple of special cases:

• An info plaintext file is expected and will be used to provide a short readable summary of the template dir.
• A prep shell script, if provided, will be sourced in the destination directory, and then removed.
• A dot-envrc file, if provided, will be copied and then renamed to .envrc in order to trigger the direnv tool. While this behavior follows that of stow, it is not currently done for other typically hidden files.

It's important for most of the scripts used in this repo that the system coreutils is the GNU version, as opposed to the BSD version.

Might be due to oh-my-posh checking for updates. Run oh-my-posh disable notice to prevent.

The configs directory contains dotfiles and dot config directories that should be symlinked to $HOME.

The xdg_configs directory contains dotfiles and dot config directories that should be symlinked to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, which is typically $HOME/.config.

These symlinks are managed with stow.

The zsh/functions.zsh file contains shell tools that can be used in the command line for convenience -- if something cannot be remembered or is part of some other frequently used command, then it probably don't belong.

The bin directory is on the PATH env var and should include portable scripts that are slightly more involved than a typical shell function, or are needed to run in contexts beyond the commandline or zshrc -- e.g. as part of other scripts.

lib/navi contains recipes that typically involve some params, but are not worth creating special shell functions to run, or one-off commands that don't need dedicated scripts.

The justfile contains commands that could potentially involve some kind of dependency, or are otherwise more context-aware -- associated with specific repos, for example.

Given the amount of keyboard interactions needed and involved, there needs to some kind of principle with respect to the keyboard shortcuts set in various contexts.

Tmux options should primarily be restricted to either using the tmux prefix c-b, or in rare occasions, using the META modifier, and avoid CTRL modifiers.

The reasoning is that it should let almost all other modifier keys go through.

The commandline is almost all commands, as the name would suggest, so shortcuts should mainly focus on options that facilitate quick insertion of content, and use the CTRL modifier. The META modifier should be used to basically indicate alternate modes of the same shortcut -- e.g. searching for files under current directory with c-o or across current repo with m-o (not implemented).

More sophisticated actions should be handled by lua functions and mapped using commands.lua. Simple actions should be tied to regular keys in normal mode, and modifier shortcuts should try to replicate their function in the shell where possible to ensure uniformity and reduce memory burden.

META modifiers should take care to avoid Tmux ones.

With macOS, system level shortcuts almost always use CMD. Custom, global ones should try not to be modified with solely META or CTRL.

A number of the zsh scripts can be sourced for effect:

• $HOME/.zsh/base.zsh encapsulates all the PATH and other env variables changed in the regular zsh shell session, as well as a large number of functions that could be useful.
• If the full set of functions are not needed, then $HOME/.zsh/env/path.zsh provides access to regular tools from homebrew, rust, etc.

Due to various constraints, not all tooling and systems or configurations are recorded in the dotfiles repo. The external dependencies are noted here:

Cascadia Code alone is the recommended font to use for this repo -- that is, I haven't really tested it with any other font. Other Nerdfont-enabled fonts should work, but there might be minor display issues?

Also, Nerdfont v3 is required.

To use at to schedule jobs, atrun must first be enabled by running

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

Source