Dotfiles

This post is a summary of a talk I was asked to give in front of my fellow PhD students. It basically was a tutorial on shell scripting and dotfile integration. I gave a live demo in which I demonstrated how I install my dotfile repository on a new machine. Dotfiles set defaults for many different programs, and make personalization of these programs easy to back up.

Inspirations

• linux background
• I like to browse for r/unixporn/ ;)
• a tinkerer by nature
• bending and breaking software is fun (awk-raycaster)
• food for your OCD monster
• everybody likes pretty things

Shells

Before talking about dotfiles, system configurations and customizations, we need to have a quick look at the basics, i.e. how we interact with the OS. Here some important keywords:

• terminal, tty, console, and shell often used as synonyms
• terminal is the text input and output environment, for UNIX equivalent with a tty or a collection of ttys
• tty (short for teletypewriter) is a particular kind of device file which implements a number of additional commands (ioctls) beyond read and write (often directly connected to hardware devices via the kernel)
• console, sometimes a primary terminal directly connecting to the machine, appears to the OS as a kernel-implemented tty
• Command-line interpreters (cli), or sometimes also synonymously labelled shells are consoles where users can issue commands
  • in the early days, the only means of interaction with the machine
  • interpreted language, most also support scripting
• many different kinds of shells:
  • sh (Thompson or Bourne)
  • csh (C-like)
  • ksh (David Korn)
  • bash (Bourne-again)
  • zsh (Zhong Shao’s username)
  • fish (friendly-interactive)
  • rsh/rbash (restricted)
  • tclsh (tcl/tk commands)
  • wish (tcl/tk gui version)
• different shell types:
  • interactive shell (accepts commands interactively)
  • non-interactive shell (usually spawned by shell scripts)
  • login shell (login via SSH or terminal, usually interactive)
    • non-login interactive shells read .bashrc files, but not your .login and .profile

Dotfiles

• What?
  • Files that start with a dot ., the most prominent example being .bashrc
  • collection of files containing settings for various programs
  • usually hidden in normal ls-ings, try typing ls -ad ~/.* in terminal
• Why?
  • why not?
  • no, seriously… it will improve your workflow drastically (if set up to your specifications)
• Where?
  • personal customizations in ~/., i.e. $HOME/.
  • various basic configurations in /etc/., e.g. /etc/bashrc (careful if you plan to change those!)
• How?
  • simply put them in your home directory
  • almost all programs use dotfiles: git .gitconfig, ls .dircolors, curl .curlrc, emacs .emacs.d/init.el, vim .vimrc, python .pythonrc.py, matplotlib .matplotlib/matplotlibrc, etc.

My dotfiles

There are many resources offering dotfile configurations, setup and maintainance frameworks:

• dotfiles.github.io
• github.com/webpro/awesome-dotfiles
• homely.readthedocs.io/en/latest

You can find my ever-growing dotfile collection here: github.com/phdenzel/dotfiles.

.USERINFO
.bashrc
.bash_profile
.aliases
.prompt
.path
.exports
.functions
.dircolors_macos
.dircolors_linux

.gitconfig
.gitignore
.pulls
.macOS

.inputrc
.screenrc
.wgetrc
.curlrc
.gdbinit
.hgignore
.editorconfig
.hushlogin

bootstrap.sh
|-- bin
|-- etc
|-- utils
|-- .emacs.d
    |-- server
|-- .config/neofetch
|-- installers
|-- custom

And this is how it looks…

Setting up a new machine

I work with lots of machines (currently about 6-7), some of them virtual. The more machines you have to set up, the more you wish you had writen something to automate this process…

1. Install OS (and set up an internet connection)
2. Install git (usually already installed, but old
   git clone https://github.com/git/git)
3. Clone dotfile repository from GitHub
   git clone https://github.com/phdenzel/dotfiles
4. Run install scripts depending on OS, e.g. brew.sh or apt.sh
5. Bootstrap dotfiles source bootstrap.sh
6. Install additional tools (via install scripts), e.g. emacs_installer.sh or python
7. If the machine is permanent, install Dropbox and symlink all directories to $HOME