mattness does dotfiles

dotfiles

This project was inspired by Zach Holman's dotfiles project, and borrows heavily from it (both in structure and in content). My thanks go to him and those who influenced and inspired his project. I considered forking his project, but decided to roll my own in light of the fact that I would have deleted more than I would have kept, and that I use bash instead of zsh.

install

• git clone git://github.com/mattness/dotfiles ~/.dotfiles
• cd ~/.dotfiles
• ./install

The install script will symlink the appropriate files in .dotfiles to your home directory. Everything is configured and tweaked within ~/.dotfiles, though.

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

uninstall

• cd ~/.dotfiles
• ./uninstall

The uninstall script will remove any symlinks the install script created, and restore any backups that the install script created. Be sure to exit any open terminal windows and restart them to clear out your environment/aliases.

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 .bash will get automatically included into your shell. Anything with an extension of .symlink will get symlinked without extension into $HOME when you run $HOME/.dotfiles/install.

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.
• topic/*.bash: Any files ending in .bash get loaded into your environment.
• topic/*.symlink: Any files ending in *.symlink get 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 $HOME/.dotfiles/install.
• topic/*.completion.sh: Any files ending in completion.sh get loaded last so that they get loaded after we set up bash autocomplete functions.

bugs

I want this to work for everyone; that means when you clone it down it should work for you. That said, I do use this as my dotfiles, so there's a good chance I may break something if I forget to make a check for a dependency.

If you're brand-new to the project and run into any blockers, please open an issue on this repository and I'd love to get it fixed for you!