dotfiles

This repository contains dotfiles for WSL and Linux. install.sh generates dotfiles for either WSL or Linux, and uses symlinks to install them.

WARNING: install.sh will overwrite existing dotfiles.

Prerequisites

• git
• apt
• curl
• Python 3.6+

install.sh requires root permissions.

Installation

cd ~
git clone git@github.com:dalyIsaac/dotfiles.git --recurse-submodules
cd dotfiles
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

How it works

• .gitignore forces git to ignore everything, apart from the few files it explicitly includes.
• All the dotfiles are stored in ./dotfiles.
  • Dotfiles contain configurations for both WSL and Linux.
  • Lines at the very start are generic, and are used by both WSL and native Linux.
  • Lines which include env:wsl indicate that the following lines are WSL specific.
  • Lines which include env:linux indicate that the following lines are specific to native Linux.
• install.sh installs stow, which is used to create symlinks from the dotfiles repo to $HOME.
  • Additionally, it uses ./generate.py to generate dotfiles which are specific to the current environment (WSL vs. native Linux) - for example, if in WSL, all the generic lines and WSL lines are emitted into a dotfile, and Linux lines are ignored.
  • The generated dotfiles are stored at the root of the project - for example, ./dotfiles/bash/.bashrc → ./bash/.bashrc (these generated dotfiles are ignored by git).
  • install.sh then uses stow to symlink the dotfiles.
  • zsh, oh-my-zsh, and various zsh extensions are installed.
  • zsh is set as the default terminal.

Variables

String interpolation occurs using the syntax {var:variable_name}. For example, {var:username} becomes dalyisaac. Variables are stored in the VARS dictionary in generate.py. If a variable is not in the dictionary, then the string interpolation is ignored - i.e. {var:not_a_username} remains the same.