dotfiles and notes on my dev env

Here to make it easier for me to setup new developer environments quickly, probably of no use to anyone but me.

Quick setup (recommended)

Quick setup details: software to install, config/dotfiles & packages

Software to install

• Visual Studio Code
• Git
• Brew (on macOS)
• Python
• Node
• Chrome
• Docker

dotfiles to copy over

NB: this replaces the systems current dotfiles.

# copy dotfiles from the repo
cp .bash_profile ~/.bash_profile
cp .bashrc ~/.bashrc
cp .gitconfig ~/.gitconfig
cp .editorconfig ~/.editorconfig

Install commonly used packages & settings

brew bundle
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
source ./install_vscode_extensions.sh
cp settings.json ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json

Detailed setup

Install the software above, then cherry pick from below

Typical brew packages

The following packages are installed via brew, to install all of them run brew bundle - this will install them from the Brewfile.

• bash: Bourne-Again SHell, a UNIX command interpreter
• bat: Clone of cat(1) with syntax highlighting and Git integration
• exa: Modern replacement for 'ls'
• git: Distributed revision control system
• gnupg: GNU Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) package
• guile: GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions
• htop: Improved top (interactive process viewer)
• httpie: User-friendly cURL replacement (command-line HTTP client)
• imagemagick: Tools and libraries to manipulate images in many formats
• nginx: HTTP(S) server and reverse proxy, and IMAP/POP3 proxy server
• python@3.10: Interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language
• rename: Perl-powered file rename script with many helpful built-ins
• thefuck: Programmatically correct mistyped console commands
• tldr: Simplified and community-driven man pages
• tree: Display directories as trees (with optional color/HTML output)
• watchman: Watch files and take action when they change
• wget: Internet file retriever

To generate the above list, run brew leaves | xargs -n1 brew desc --eval-all.

Working with Brewfile's

# creates Brewfile in the current directory from currently-installed packages
rm Brewfile # brew won't override the file by default
brew bundle dump

# install everything from the Brewfile
brew bundle

Typical python packages

Typical python packages are listed in requirements.txt.

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Working with requirements.txt

# create a requirements file in the current directory from currently-installed packages
pip3 freeze > requirements.txt

# install everything from the requirements file
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Typical Visual Studio Code extensions

Typical python packages are listed in vscode.extensions, and can be installed by running source ./install_vscode_extensions.sh.

To update the extensions list: code --list-extensions > vscode.extensions.

Typical Visual Studio Code settings

Place the settings file in the following locations:

• macOS $HOME/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json
• Linux $HOME/.config/Code/User/settings.json
• Windows %APPDATA%\Code\User\settings.json

Working with editors (including Visual Studio Code)

There is a default editorconfig file in this repo, with sensible overrides - particularly if you are using Prettier. Simple copy it to your code location (or your home directory).

Working with Docker

The .bashrc files includes a couple of Docker helper functions:

dockershell: start containers in an interactive shell. dockermappedshell: start containers in an interactive shell, with the current directory is mapped into the container.

Examples:

dockershell centos
dockershell node
dockershell nginx
dockershell your-container

dockermappedshell centos
dockermappedshell node
dockermappedshell nginx
dockermappedshell your-container

Working on Windows OS

Been a few years since I've developed on Windows, the below was handy then, may be handy in future.

• 7-zip
• curl
• Dependency Walker
• Process Explorer
• Cpp Check
• paint.net
• WinDiff / WinMerge

Updating this repo

When new items are installed/removed from your dev env, or just periodically, run the following to update this repo with a snapshot of the current system

source ./update-repo.sh

Updating only parts

Take your pick from the following:

# copy dotfiles to the repo
cp ~/.bash_profile .
cp ~/.bashrc .
cp ~/.gitconfig .

# update package files
brew bundle dump
pip3 freeze > requirements.txt
code --list-extensions > vscode.extensions

# copy settings files
cp ~/Library/Application\ Support/Code/User/settings.json .