dotfiles

Setup and configuration for my terminal based developer workflow:

• Zsh for a shell
• Nix for package management of shell programs
• uv for Python
• Neovim for text editing
• Stow for dotfiles management

This repo should be cloned into $HOME and set as $XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

Use

Ubuntu

Setup an Ubuntu machine:

$ make setup-ubuntu

This will also setup dependencies with Nix.

macOS

Setup an macOS machine:

$ make setup-macos

This will also setup dependencies with Nix.

Python

Install uv and setup a global Python installation in a virtual environment:

$ make python

Components

Use GNU Stow to symlink dotfiles for Bash, Zsh, Tmux and Git:

$ make dotfiles

Note: The OS variable is automatically set by the setup-macos and setup-ubuntu targets. For manual dotfiles setup, you can export the OS variable first:

$ export OS=macos && make dotfiles

Valid values for OS are macos, wsl or windows.

A script ./stow/setup.sh will attempt to bootstrap Stow if it's not already available. Stow bootstrapping is not setup for Windows because Windows is awful.

You can run the setup without bootstrapping Stow with:

$ make dotfiles OS=macos -o setup-stow

Nix

Install packages with Nix from a Nix Flake - I use Nix for things like direnv and Neovim:

$ make nix-pkgs

This will setup dependencies with Nix from ./nix/flake.nix.

It will also install Nix itself. Nix doesn't like to be installed multiple times - you can avoid this step with:

$ make nix-pkgs -o setup-nix

Neovim

Neovim config is in ./nvim. To use the Neovim setup, put this folder into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME.

I use Lazy for package management in Neovim - it will install packages when you first open the editor.

Getting Kitty to Play Nice on macOS

Had weird issue with the first execution of Kitty not loading the kitty.conf correctly - fixed with:

# ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setenv.XDG_CONFIG_HOME.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>setenv.XDG_CONFIG_HOME</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>sh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>launchctl setenv XDG_CONFIG_HOME $HOME/dotfiles</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

$ launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/setenv.XDG_CONFIG_HOME.plist