Dotfiles

Inspired by (nice word for copied ;) ) Holmans doftiles.

Main differences:

• topic/symlinks file for list of symlinks to create. Support other destination paths than $HOME.
• changed $ZSH to $MY_ZSH - collision with oh-my-zsh
• configuration profiles - separate repositories as git submodules for machine-specific overrides

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.

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/*.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/symlinks: each line should contain src to file/dir to link and a dst to link to. They should be separated by white sign (i.e. space). Src path should be relative to topic directory. For dst path $HOME will be resolved to home directory.

profiles

Profiles allow you to maintain machine-specific configurations in separate git repositories. Profile repos are stored as git submodules in the profiles/ directory.

How profiles work

• Profile files override base dotfiles on a file-by-file basis
• If a profile has git/aliases.zsh, it replaces only that file from base
• All other base files are still loaded
• Profiles can also add new topics that don't exist in base

Adding a profile

# Add a profile as a git submodule
git submodule add git@github.com:youruser/dotfiles-work.git profiles/work

# Bootstrap with the profile
script/bootstrap.sh --profile work

# Or use environment variable
DOTFILES_PROFILE=work script/bootstrap.sh

Profile repository structure

Your profile repo should mirror the dotfiles topic structure:

dotfiles-work/          # Your profile repository
├── git/
│   └── aliases.zsh     # Overrides base git/aliases.zsh
├── editor/
│   └── env.zsh         # Overrides base editor/env.zsh
├── work-tools/         # New topic (only in this profile)
│   ├── path.zsh
│   └── install.sh
└── symlinks            # Profile-level symlinks

Profile selection priority

1. Command line argument: --profile work
2. Environment variable: DOTFILES_PROFILE=work
3. Saved profile file: ~/.dotfiles_profile

The selected profile is automatically saved to ~/.dotfiles_profile for future shell sessions.

Switching profiles

# Switch to a different profile
script/bootstrap.sh --profile personal

# Clear profile (use base config only)
rm ~/.dotfiles_profile
script/bootstrap.sh

install

Run this:

git clone https://github.com/belskar/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/.