dotfiles

requirements

# macos
$ brew install fish stow git neovim

# fedora
$ sudo dnf install fish stow neovim

# debian / ubuntu
$ sudo apt install fish stow neovim

usage

After installing the packages above, switch shell to fish and restart:

$ chsh --shell $(which fish)

Install fisher:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jorgebucaran/fisher/main/functions/fisher.fish | source && fisher install jorgebucaran/fisher

Install mise:

curl https://mise.run | sh

Install rustup:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Stow the packages:

$ stow fish
$ stow nvim
$ stow git
# ...

Install the global toolchains with mise:

# First install the tools
$ mise install go python node

# Then install the rest
# We do this because some of our tools leverage toolchains that need to be installed first
# such as gopls and pipx
$ mise install

stow options (and adopting new files)

The .stowrc in this repository includes three options, one of which introduces some significant beahvior change from the defaults.

-v

Turns on verbose mode which helpfully prints all actions stow will take.

--dotfiles

Instructs stow to replace dot- with . on file and directory prefixes when stowing packages. This is a matter of personal preference, but I prefer the dot- prefix in my repository.

--no-folding

This option disables what stow calls tree folding, where stow will attempt to minimize the number of links that it creates. Read the link if you're interested in the details.

Disabling folding means that instead of optimally creating links to directories, stow will instead only link files. This will help keep your dotfiles repository clean from cruft placed there by tools at runtime.

For example, I prefer the fish shell, and I use the fisher plugin manager for fish. I have fisher configured to download plugins and their assorted configuration into ~/.config/fish/plugged. With the normal stow behavior, if I run stow fish, it'll create a link from ~/.config/fish to ~/dotfiles/fish/dot-config/fish, which will result in the downloaded plugin sources to show up in my dotfiles repository (at ~/dotfiles/fish/dot-config/fish/plugged) and necessitate a .gitignore entry.

Instead, disable tree folding. This way the only files that will exist in this repository are the ones I put there myself.

If you need to introduce a new file (for example, writing a new fish function) the simplest thing to do is:

$ touch ~/dotfiles/fish/dot-config/fish/functions/new-function.fish
$ pushd ~/dotfiles && stow fish && popd
$ vim ~/.config/fish/functions/new-function.fish
$ ... hack hack hack ...