dotfiles

Usage
Objectives
Management
Tested environments
Thanks
License

Here lies my own collection of dotfiles. In contrast to many other dotfiles collections mine are setup with slightly different objectives which reflect my occupation as a SysAdmin & DevOps engineer versus a pure developer.

Usage

Unix-like

On Unix-like systems the included dot-update and dot-manage scripts handle everything for you.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ralish/dotfiles.git

# Run dot-update with all operations to:
# - Initialise & update submodules
# - Stow all detected components (i.e. dot-manage)
# - Download various binaries (e.g. shellcheck)
# - Download Vim plug-ins
dotfiles/dot-update -a

Windows

On Windows systems the PSDotFiles PowerShell module is used, which provides similar functionality to Stow.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ralish/dotfiles.git

# Install PSDotFiles
Install-Module -Name PSDotFiles -Scope CurrentUser

# View detected components
Get-DotFiles -Path dotfiles -Autodetect

# Install detected components
Install-DotFiles -Path dotfiles -Autodetect

Objectives

My primary occupation is that of a SysAdmin and so I often find myself working on many different systems. This introduces some key objectives I've tried to ensure my dotfiles meet:

Ease of access
GitHub makes this easy by providing access to ZIP files of each branch in a repository. While a Git clone is strongly preferable, if this is too much effort or otherwise problematic, simply downloading and unpacking the ZIP archive is a helpful fallback.
Ease of setup
A long or manual installation or removal process is painful and time-consuming. An automated approach is essential so that installation is quick and easy, with removal similarly straightforward if this is desirable (e.g. on a shared access account).
Portability
It's all too easy for platform assumptions to seep into configurations. I've tried my best to avoid such assumptions so that all configurations work on platforms where the underlying application or library is supported, or at least degrade gracefully.

Management

I've settled on using Stow to manage my dotfiles due to the following attributes:

Compatible
Most Unix-like systems have Perl installed by default and Stow itself has no peculiar dependencies.
Portable
Stow can be included in the repository and subsequently stow itself into a location in the user's PATH for a quick bootstrap!
Organised
Stow makes keeping the repository organised simple, with each directory containing the configuration for a specific program or library.
Granular
Stow operates on chosen directories allowing for only a desired subset of applications or library configurations to be installed.
Revertible
Stow can undo the changes it makes, ensuring that leaving the system in the same state as it was originally is trivial to do.
Stateless
Stow doesn't need to maintain any state between executions which helps keep the system simple, and consequently less likely to break.
Lightweight
Stow is fast, unintrusive, and at the time of writing the script comes in at a mere ~120KB!

Tested environments

The following environments are expected to work:

Cygwin (1.7 or newer)
FreeBSD (8.3 or newer)
Linux (Ubuntu 12.04 or newer)
macOS (10.9 or newer)
Windows (Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 or newer)

Thanks

The numerous people whose dotfiles served as inspiration or templates for my own.

I keep a record of resources I've found particularly useful here.

License

All content is licensed under the terms of The Unlicense License.

ralish / dotfiles