dotfiles

Cross-platform bash environment plus an OS-package updater. Lives in ~/.dotfiles, gets symlinked into $HOME via GNU stow, kept current with update.sh.

Scope is deliberately narrow: bash, tmux, mosh, docker. No editor, no window manager, no language toolchains.

Quick start

# One-liner, after you've got curl OR wget:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MW0MWZ/dotfiles/main/bootstrap.sh | sh

# Or run from a local clone:
git clone https://github.com/MW0MWZ/dotfiles ~/.dotfiles
sh ~/.dotfiles/bootstrap.sh

Override defaults via env vars:

DOTFILES_REPO=https://example.com/me/dotfiles.git \
DOTFILES_DIR="$HOME/.config/dotfiles" \
sh bootstrap.sh

What bootstrap.sh does

1. Detects the OS, current shell, and whether bash is reachable. If bash isn't installed, tries to install it via the system package manager before giving up (handles Alpine / minimal images).
2. Re-execs under bash once a working bash is located. Re-exec also fires when the current shell is bash but in POSIX mode (e.g. /bin/sh -> bash on macOS and some Fedora installs), since later lib helpers use process substitution that POSIX mode rejects.
3. Verifies git, stow, and curl|wget are installed; offers to install missing ones via the system package manager.
4. Clones (or pulls) the repo to $DOTFILES_DIR (default ~/.dotfiles).
5. For each stow package (bash, tmux), walks the target tree and moves any pre-existing real file aside to <file>.bak.<timestamp> before symlinking. The walker is tree-aware: if a directory in $HOME is already a symlink into the repo, it skips that subtree instead of recursing through the symlink — so re-runs of bootstrap (or update.sh) never corrupt the repo by mv-ing through a folded directory.
6. Prompts to change the login shell to bash (chsh). Skipped when the current login shell already resolves to the same binary (/bin/bash and /usr/bin/bash on usrmerge distros are the same file via symlink). Failure of chsh itself (e.g. PAM password prompt with no controlling tty) prints a manual-fix hint and continues — it never aborts bootstrap.
7. Prompts to install tmux, mosh, fzf, direnv, bash-completion, and Docker. Each is independent; skip what you don't want.

What update.sh does

~/.dotfiles/update.sh          # both: pull + re-stow + OS package update
~/.dotfiles/update.sh --no-sync   # OS packages only
~/.dotfiles/update.sh --no-pkgs   # dotfile sync only

git pull --ff-only keeps ~/.dotfiles current and re-stows idempotently (newly-added files get linked, existing links left alone). Then it dispatches to lib/os/<platform>.sh for native package updates.

Symlinks make the sync free: editing a file in ~/.dotfiles/bash/... takes effect immediately. There is no version marker — git is the source of truth.

Layout

~/.dotfiles/
├── bootstrap.sh         POSIX sh, first-run setup
├── update.sh            bash, OS pkg update + dotfile re-stow
├── install_stow.sh      userspace stow builder (Solaris 10 fallback etc)
├── lib/
│   ├── detect.sh        OS / shell / bash-version probes
│   ├── install.sh       per-OS package install helpers
│   ├── stow.sh          tree-aware backup-on-conflict, then stow each package
│   ├── optional.sh      chsh prompt + tmux/mosh/fzf/direnv/bash-completion/docker installer
│   └── os/<platform>.sh per-platform package update routine
├── bash/                stow package: $HOME bash environment
│   ├── .bash_profile
│   ├── .profile
│   ├── .bashrc
│   ├── .inputrc
│   ├── .profile.d/      sourced by .profile (PATH, EDITOR, etc)
│   └── .bashrc.d/       sourced by .bashrc (interactive: aliases, funcs, prompt)
└── tmux/                stow package: .tmux.conf

Local overrides

Files the dotfiles never touch but the rc files source if present:

file	sourced from	purpose
~/.profile.local	~/.profile	per-host env vars / PATH tweaks
~/.bashrc.local	~/.bashrc	per-host aliases / functions / etc

Edit these freely. They never get overwritten by update.sh.

tmux defaults worth flagging

• Mouse mode is off by default. macOS Terminal.app's xterm-mouse handoff to tmux drops clicks and feeds scroll events to the wrong pane. If you want it on per-session: prefix : set mouse on.
• Copy uses OSC 52, not platform clipboard tools. prefix [ enters copy-mode, motion keys + y copies, and tmux emits an escape sequence the outer terminal decodes into your local clipboard. Works identically whether tmux is local or on a remote you ssh/mosh'd into. Each terminal needs to be told once to honour OSC 52:
  • iTerm2: Preferences → General → Selection → "Applications in terminal may access clipboard"
  • Terminal.app: defaults write com.apple.Terminal AllowClipboardAccess -bool true
  • kitty, foot, wezterm, Alacritty: on by default

Supported platforms

Platform	Bootstrap	OS update routine
macOS (Intel + Apple)	yes	lib/os/darwin.sh (Homebrew + softwareupdate)
Debian / Ubuntu	yes	lib/os/linux-debian.sh
RHEL / CentOS / Rocky	yes	lib/os/linux-rhel.sh
Fedora	yes	lib/os/linux-fedora.sh
Arch	yes	lib/os/linux-arch.sh
openSUSE / SLES	yes	lib/os/linux-suse.sh
Alpine	yes	lib/os/linux-alpine.sh
FreeBSD	yes	lib/os/freebsd.sh
OpenBSD	yes	lib/os/openbsd.sh
Solaris 10 / 11	yes	lib/os/sunos.sh (OpenCSW pkgutil)

bash 3.2 is the lowest-common-denominator target (Apple's /bin/bash, Solaris 10). Features that need newer bash are feature-gated on BASH_VERSINFO.

Bash 3.2 quirks worth knowing about

• The recursive glob ~/.bashrc.d/**/*.bash expands as */*.bash on bash without globstar. Drop-ins live exactly one level deep so the same pattern works on both.
• local -A (associative arrays) and ${var,,} (lowercase expansion) are bash 4+. Don't reach for them in .bashrc.d/*.bash without a version guard.

Userspace stow

If your package manager can't supply stow (looking at you, Solaris 10), bootstrap.sh will offer to run install_stow.sh, which builds stow into ~/.local from the GNU FTP source tarball. Requires perl, make, tar, and curl|wget.