.dotfiles

Uses a method described in this HackerNews thread to maintain dotfiles. Other references are

https://www.anand-iyer.com/blog/2018/a-simpler-way-to-manage-your-dotfiles.html

https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles

First time setup

Install tmux, zsh, git before proceeding

mkdir $HOME/.dotfiles
git init --bare $HOME/.dotfiles

We will make an alias for running git commands in our .dotfiles repository. I’m calling my alias dotfiles. Add this line to your .zshrc/.bashrc:

alias dotfiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

From now on, any git operation you would like to do in the .dotfiles repository can be done by the dotfiles alias. The cool thing is that you can run dotfiles from anywhere.

Let’s add a remote, and also set status not to show untracked files:

dotfiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
dotfiles remote add origin [email protected]:[yourusername]/.dotfiles.git

For an example:

cd $HOME
dotfiles add .tmux.conf
dotfiles commit -m "Add .tmux.conf"
dotfiles push origin master

To backup gnome terminal settings, run the following line:

dconf dump /org/gnome/terminal/ > gnome_terminal_settings_backup.txt

Setting up a new machine

To set up a new machine to use your version controlled config files, all you need to do is to clone the repository on your new machine telling git that it is a bare repository:

git clone --separate-git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles https://github.com/[yourusername]/.dotfiles.git ~

However, some programs create default config files, so this might fail if git finds an existing config file in your $HOME. In that case, a simple solution is to clone to a temporary directory, and then delete it once you are done:

git clone --separate-git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles https://github.com/[yourusername]/.dotfiles.git tmpdotfiles
rsync --recursive --verbose --exclude '.git' tmpdotfiles/ $HOME/
rm -r tmpdotfiles

To add gnome terminal settings run the following line:

dconf load /org/gnome/terminal/ < gnome_terminal_settings_backup.txt

i3-gaps installation

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kgilmer/speed-ricer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install i3-gaps

Open the ~/.config/i3/config file and add these lines:

gaps inner 10
gaps outer 0
smart_gaps on

i3blocks

git clone https://github.com/vivien/i3blocks
cd i3blocks
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install

Clone i3blocks-contrib repo in the home directory.