Dotfiles

This repo is a fork of holman's dotfiles with some modifications specific to my own needs.

Before starting, make sure your terminal is running in ZSH:

chsh -s /bin/zsh

Install

Run this:

git clone https://github.com/hershmire/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 may 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. However, if you are just looking to add paths or other setup to things outside these dotfiles, create a .localrc file in your home directory and this will automatically pick it up.

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/.

What's Included

Shell

• Starship prompt with git status, Node.js version, battery, and directory info
• fzf for fuzzy finding
• zoxide for smarter directory navigation

Font

These dotfiles install JetBrains Mono Nerd Font via Homebrew and configure iTerm2 to use it. Nerd Fonts patch in thousands of icons (Powerline symbols, devicons, etc.) that tools like Starship and eza use to display glyphs in your prompt and file listings.

To verify the font is working, run:

echo "\ue0b0 \ue0b2 \uf113 \uf015 \uf09b \uf07c"

You should see Powerline arrows and various icons. If you see boxes or question marks, make sure the font is selected in your terminal (iTerm2: Settings → Profiles → Text).

Starship Prompt

Starship is a cross-shell prompt that shows contextual info about your environment. Here's what a typical prompt looks like:

.dotfiles on  edits [!] on ☁️  frank@example.com
❯

Segment	Module	Meaning
.dotfiles	directory	Current directory
edits [!]	git_branch + git_status	Git branch; [!] = modified files
☁️ frank@example.com	gcloud	Active Google Cloud account

Starship enables modules automatically when it detects relevant tools (gcloud, node, python, etc.). To see what your prompt is currently showing and why, run:

starship explain

The config lives at starship/starship.toml.symlink (symlinked to ~/.starship.toml). Starship doesn't support config includes, so personal customizations go directly in this file. Since it's tracked by git, use git update-index --skip-worktree starship/starship.toml.symlink to keep local changes from showing up in diffs. For example, to disable the gcloud module, add:

[gcloud]
disabled = true

Modern CLI Replacements

• eza replaces ls
• bat replaces cat
• ripgrep for fast text search
• fd for fast file finding

Version Management

• asdf manages Node.js, Ruby, Java, and Yarn versions

Editors

• Windsurf and Antigravity PATH support in editors/

Other Tools

• Git utilities and aliases in git/ and bin/
• Homebrew dependencies managed via Brewfile (run brew bundle to install)
• macOS system defaults in macos/

Topical

Everything's built around topic areas. If you're adding a new area to your forked dotfiles — say, "Go" — you can simply add a go directory and put files in there. Anything with an extension of .zsh will get automatically included into your shell. Anything with an extension of .symlink will get symlinked without extension into $HOME when you run script/bootstrap.

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.
• Brewfile: This is a list of applications for Homebrew to install: things like Caddy, asdf, Git, etc. Might want to edit this file before running any initial setup.
• 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/*.symlink: Any file ending in *.symlink gets 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 script/bootstrap.

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!

Thanks

I forked Ryan Bates' excellent dotfiles for a couple years before the weight of my changes and tweaks inspired me to finally roll my own. But Ryan's dotfiles were an easy way to get into bash customization, and then to jump ship to zsh a bit later. A decent amount of the code in these dotfiles stem or are inspired from Ryan's original project.