My personal dotfiles

This repository serves as my way to help me setup and maintain my Mac. It takes the effort out of installing everything manually. Everything needed to install my preferred setup of macOS is detailed in this readme. Feel free to explore, learn and copy parts for your own dotfiles.

A Fresh macOS Setup

These instructions are for when you've already set up your dotfiles. If you want to get started on your own dotfiles you can find instructions below.

Before you re-install

First, go through the checklist below to make sure you didn't forget anything before you wipe your hard drive.

Did you commit and push any changes/branches to your git repositories?
Did you remember to save all important documents from non-iCloud directories?
Did you save all of your work from apps which aren't synced through iCloud?
Did you remember to export important data from your local database?
Did you update mackup to the latest version and ran mackup backup?

Installing macOS cleanly

After going through our checklist above and making sure you backed everything up, we're going to cleanly install macOS with the latest release. Follow this article to cleanly install the latest macOS version.

Setting up your Mac

If you did all of the above you may now follow these install instructions to setup a new Mac.

Update macOS to the latest version with the App Store
Install Xcode from the App Store, open it and accept the license agreement
Install macOS Command Line tools by running xcode-select --install
Generate a new public and private SSH key by running:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rawilk/dotfiles/HEAD/ssh.sh | sh -s "<your-email-address>"

Clone this repo to ~/.dotfiles with:

git clone git@github.com:rawilk/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

Run the installation with:

~/.dotfiles/fresh.sh

After mackup is synced with your local storage, restore preferences by running mackup restore
Restart your computer to finalize the process

💡 You can use a different location than ~/.dotfiles if you want. Make sure you also update the reference in the .zshrc file.

Your Mac is now ready to use!

All install commands

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rawilk/dotfiles/HEAD/ssh.sh | sh -s "<your-email-address>"
git clone git@github.com:rawilk/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
~/.dotfiles/fresh.sh
~/.dotfiles/macos/set-defaults.sh

Signing Commits - Optional

It's generally a good idea to sign your git commits with a gpg key. This article explains why you would want to do this in more detail. To do this, you will need to generate a new gpg key and tell GitHub about it.

Generate a GPG key pair

Your key must use RSA.

gpg --full-generate-key

At the prompt, specify the kind of key you want - press Enter to accept the default
At the prompt, specify the key size you want - press Enter to accept the default. Your key must be at least 4096 bits.
Enter the length of time the key should be valid. Press Enter to specify the default selection, indicating that the key doesn't expire.
Enter your user ID information
- Ensure you are using the verified email address for your GitHub account.
Type a secure passphrase

Find your new key

gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long

From the list of GPG keys, copy the long form of the GPG key ID you'd like to use. In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

gpg --list-secret-keys --keyid-format=long
/Users/hubot/.gnupg/secring.gpg
------------------------------------
sec   4096R/3AA5C34371567BD2 2016-03-10 [expires: 2017-03-10]
uid                          Hubot 
ssb   4096R/42B317FD4BA89E7A 2016-03-10

Copy the key

Paste the command below, substituting the GPG key ID you'd like to use. In this example, the GPG key ID is 3AA5C34371567BD2:

gpg --armor --export 3AA5C34371567BD2
# Prints the GPG key ID, in ASCII armor format

Now you can add the key to your GitHub account.

Sign your commits

Using the same key ID from the example above, enter the following command:

git config --global user.signingkey 3AA5C34371567BD2

To auto-sign all commits, enter the following command:

git config --global commit.gpgSign true

Your Own Dotfiles

Please note that the instructions below assume you already have set up Oh My Zsh so make sure to first install Oh My Zsh before you continue.

If you want to install your own dotfiles from this setup, it's pretty easy to do so. First you'll need to fork this repo. After that you can tweak it any way you want.

Go through the .macos file and adjust the settings to your liking. You can find much more settings at the original script by Mathias Bynens and Kevin Suttle's macOS Defaults project.

Check out the Brewfile file and adjust the apps you want to install for your machine. Use their search page to check if the app you want to install is available.

Check out the .aliases file and add your own aliases. If you need to tweak your $PATH check out the .zshrc file. More info about how to customize Oh My Zsh can be found here.

Credits

Inspiration for these dotfiles taken from:

rawilk / dotfiles