Dotfiles overview

Originally from https://github.com/holman/dotfiles:

Your dotfiles are how you personalize your system. These are mine.

I was a little tired of having long alias files and everything strewn about (which is extremely common on other dotfiles projects, too). That led to this project being much more topic-centric. I realized I could split a lot of things up into the main areas I used (Ruby, git, system libraries, and so on), so I structured the project accordingly.

If you're interested in the philosophy behind why projects like these are awesome, you might want to read my post on the subject.

Topical

Everything's built around topic areas. If you're adding a new area to your forked dotfiles — say, "Java" — you can simply add a java directory and put files in there. Anything with an extension of .zsh will get automatically included into your shell. Anything with an extension of .symlink will get symlinked without extension into $HOME when you run script/bootstrap.

What's inside

A lot of stuff. Seriously, a lot of stuff. Check them out in the file browser above and see what components may mesh up with you. Fork it, remove what you don't use, and build on what you do use.

Components

There's a few special files in the hierarchy.

• bin/: Anything in bin/ will get added to your $PATH and be made available everywhere.
• Brewfile: This is a list of applications for Homebrew Cask to install: things like Chrome and 1Password and Adium and stuff. Might want to edit this file before running any initial setup.
• topic/*.zsh: Any files ending in .zsh get loaded into your environment.
• topic/path.zsh: Any file named path.zsh is loaded first and is expected to setup $PATH or similar.
• topic/completion.zsh: Any file named completion.zsh is loaded last and is expected to setup autocomplete.
• topic/install.sh: Any file named install.sh is executed when you run script/install. To avoid being loaded automatically, its extension is .sh, not .zsh.
• topic/*.symlink: Any file ending in *.symlink gets symlinked into your $HOME. This is so you can keep all of those versioned in your dotfiles but still keep those autoloaded files in your home directory. These get symlinked in when you run script/bootstrap.

Install

Run this:

git clone https://github.com/circAssimilate/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
script/bootstrap

This will symlink the appropriate files in .dotfiles to your home directory. Everything is configured and tweaked within ~/.dotfiles.

The main file you'll want to change right off the bat is zsh/zshrc.symlink, which sets up a few paths that'll be different on your particular machine.

dot is a simple script that installs some dependencies, sets sane macOS defaults, and so on. Tweak this script, and occasionally run dot from time to time to keep your environment fresh and up-to-date. You can find this script in bin/.

Working with Private Credentials

This dotfiles collection has the path private/* added to it's .gitignore. To export environment credentials that should not be shared, you can create a /private directory at the root of this repo and create a file to store these in (e.g. credentials.zsh).

Reloading Dotfiles

You can restart your session or just use reload! in any shell to get the latest configuration.

Karabiner Elements

Modify your caps lock key to behave like escape when pressed alone or the control key when pressed with another key. Download and install Karabiner and add the following to the rules list within the home folder karabiner config (~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json).

{
  "description": "Post escape if caps is pressed alone, left_ctrl otherwise",
  "manipulators": [
    {
      "from": {
        "key_code": "caps_lock",
        "modifiers": {
          "optional": [
            "any"
          ]
        }
      },
      "to": [
        {
          "key_code": "left_control"
        }
      ],
      "to_if_alone": [
        {
          "key_code": "escape"
        }
      ],
      "type": "basic"
    }
  ]
}

Updating Screenshots Directory

Remove the dropshadow from screenshots then configure them to save to the ~/Screenshots directory:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true && killall SystemUIServer
mkdir ~/Screenshots && defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Screenshots