: '

                                        _       _    __ _ _
                                       | |     | |  / _(_) |
                                     __| | ___ | |_| |_ _| | ___  ___
                                    / _` |/ _ \| __|  _| | |/ _ \/ __|
                                   | (_| | (_) | |_| | | | |  __/\__ \
                                    \__,_|\___/ \__|_| |_|_|\___||___/
                                     --------------------------------          
                               Can't work with them, can't work without them
                               ---------------------------------------------


'

Dotfiles

This public repo contains most of the config files that I deem useful for myself. While I've been using GNU Stow so far, I've switched to using a bare repository since Stow is not available by default on most distributions. While installing it is not a pain per se, the elegance of bare git repositories for dotfile management appealed to me more.

A brief shout out to Chezmoi, which seems very interesting at first glance with its fancy templating features and encryption. In the end, I deemed it an additional dependency and translation layer that just comes in the way of my style of config management.

Usage

# Clone bare repo
git clone --bare https://github.com/jayghoshter/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dots

# Use this alias for brevity
alias dot="/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dots --work-tree=$HOME"

# Hide untracked files
dot config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

# Checkout worktree
dot checkout master <paths>

# Avoid recursion issues (unsure if it's actually needed)
echo ".dots" >> $HOME/.gitignore

For quick deployment of the essentials: curl -fsSL https://git.io/JGBz8 | zsh

Dependencies

TPM
It would seem that I need build-essential on Ubuntu, i.e. gcc/g++/make for some nvim plugins I have in my overly complicated setup.
xclip
file (might not be available on vanilla ubuntu)

The Big Picture

My dev workflow is always evolving with me. This means using new tools and configurations every day. While this is no trouble on my local machine, keeping my dev environment on servers updated has been a pain.

Over time, I've learnt that there are a few "standards" I need to adopt to reduce my headaches.

File Structure

Using a consistent directory structure is essential.

└── home
    ├── bin             # scripts 
    ├── dev             # development
    ├── local           # install prefix
    └── repos           # cloned repos

The Portable Dev Environment

I understand the value of going fully minimal and being happy with default software and configs etc, but that's not for me. I want all my keystrokes to do the same thing everywhere. In my case, this is handled with zinit.

On my local machine, I can just have a global install of whatever I want anyway. Inside an if clause, I pull the necessary binaries/scripts if the host is not my local machine. My whole environment is then handled by my shell -- no messy install scripts that need upkeep. Zinit is awesome.

zinit update is all I need to run once in a while. I just have to ensure that I have the right zsh version installed to begin with.

Updating server setups

dot pull
zinit self-update
zinit update --parallel
nvim +PackerSync

Notes:

Sometimes zinit delete user/repo and a shell restart will be required if specifications are changed in the .zshrc file
Neovim's packer compiles its config. So sometimes you'll have to do :PackerCompile to get things right. Mostly, I have autocmds setup to do this, but some edge cases don't trigger them
Neovim's packer might complain when installing plugins fails. Remove the plugin, PackerSync, then add, and PackerSync again should fix the issue
A negative of using a bare git repo in ~ is that new config files have to be manually added.

jayghoshter / dotfiles