🚀 ubuntu-dev-setup

An automated, developer-focused bootstrap script to configure a fresh Ubuntu workstation into a high-productivity development environment in minutes.

Whether you are setting up a local machine, a fresh VM, or a remote server, ubuntu-dev-setup installs core utilities, configures containerization, sets up optimized system limits, configures rapid Python package tooling, registers helpful aliases, and sets up Git/SSH credentials securely.

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✨ Features

• 📦 Core Utilities & Toolchains: Installs essential development packages (git, gh, curl, jq, htop, vim, lsof, build-essential, openssh).
• 🐳 Docker Ecosystem: Installs Docker Engine & Docker Compose (v2) from official Docker repositories, configures non-root access, and configures Docker CLI shell auto-completions.
• ⚡ Lightning Fast Python: Installs Astral's uv (fast Python toolchain manager) and automatically configures shell autocompletions for Bash and Zsh.
• 🟨 Interactive Node.js Setup (Optional): Prompts to install Fast Node Manager (fnm) and Node.js LTS, keeping your JavaScript setup modern and switchable.
• 🦀 Rust Toolchain (Optional): Installs rustup with the stable toolchain and automatically configures ~/.cargo/env in all shell profiles.
• 🐹 Go Toolchain (Optional): Downloads and installs the latest official Go release from go.dev into /usr/local/go and injects $GOPATH/bin into your shell PATH.
• 🚀 Starship Prompt (Optional): Installs Starship — a blazing-fast, infinitely customizable cross-shell prompt — and registers its init hook for Bash and Zsh.
• 🛠️ Modern CLI Power-ups (Optional): Prompts to install high-productivity command line utilities: fzf (fuzzy finder), ripgrep (search), and bat (enhanced cat with syntax highlighting).
• 🖥️ Desktop IDEs (Optional / GUI-only): Safely detects a graphical desktop environment and offers to install VS Code (native Microsoft APT package) and PyCharm Community (classic Snap package).
• ⚙️ Performance Tweaks: Optimizes Linux file-watcher limits (fs.inotify.max_user_watches) to ensure smooth performance in heavy IDEs (like VS Code, IntelliJ, etc.).
• 🎨 Colorized Output: Every stage uses ANSI color-coded log helpers (log_step, log_success, log_warning, log_error) so you can follow progress at a glance.
• 💻 Productive Environment: Registers pre-configured, helpful shell aliases (e.g., gs, dco, dps) and PATH settings to both Bash and Zsh (via ~/.bashrc and ~/.zshrc).
• 🔑 Interactive Identity Setup: Guides you through configuring Git global settings and generates modern Ed25519 SSH keys for GitHub/GitLab without overwriting existing keys.
• 🐳 Container & Host Aware: Automatically detects if it is running inside a Docker container (where root is the default) or on a host machine, adapting permissions and execution styles accordingly.
• 🔍 Pre-flight Idempotency Check: Scans and displays current versions of all known tools before doing anything, so you know exactly what will change.
• 📋 Post-install Summary Report: Prints a clean formatted table at the end showing every tool's status (newly installed with version, already installed, or skipped).
• 🧪 --dry-run Mode: Preview every action the script would take without touching your system — perfect for auditing on shared or company machines.
• 🚄 --minimal Mode: Non-interactive core-only install (apt packages, Docker, uv). Great for fast CI server bootstraps.
• 🤖 --full Mode: Fully automated unattended install of everything. Perfect for CI/CD pipelines, provisioning scripts, and Dockerfiles.

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🚀 Quick Start

Option 1: Direct Execution (Recommended for fresh machines)

Run using process substitution so interactive prompts work correctly:

bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Harshidpatel12/ubuntu-dev-setup/main/setup.sh)

On a minimal image without wget:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y wget && bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Harshidpatel12/ubuntu-dev-setup/main/setup.sh)

Option 2: Clone and Run

git clone https://github.com/Harshidpatel12/ubuntu-dev-setup.git
cd ubuntu-dev-setup
chmod +x setup.sh
./setup.sh

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🎛️ CLI Flags & Modes

The script supports several flags for different use cases:

Flag	Description
(none)	Default interactive mode — prompts for each optional tool
--dry-run	Preview all actions without modifying the system
--minimal	Non-interactive: install core tools only (apt, Docker, uv)
--full	Non-interactive: install everything automatically
--help	Show usage information and exit

Flags can be combined. For example:

# Preview a full install without touching anything (great for auditing)
./setup.sh --dry-run --full

# Fast CI server bootstrap — core tools only, no questions
./setup.sh --minimal

# Fully automated workstation setup — no prompts at all
./setup.sh --full

# Non-interactive setup via curl in CI/CD pipelines
bash <(wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Harshidpatel12/ubuntu-dev-setup/main/setup.sh) --full

Use in CI / Docker

# Example Dockerfile snippet
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl wget sudo && \
    wget -qO setup.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Harshidpatel12/ubuntu-dev-setup/main/setup.sh && \
    chmod +x setup.sh && ./setup.sh --full

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🛠️ Detailed Stack Breakdown

Here is exactly what gets installed and configured:

1. System Packages

The script updates your local package lists and installs the following:

• Version Control: git, gh (official GitHub CLI)
• Network & Fetching: curl, openssh-server, openssh-client
• Diagnostics & Monitoring: htop, lsof, jq
• Compilers & Build Tools: build-essential (gcc, g++, make)
• Text Editors: vim
• Utilities: tldr (simplified man pages), bash-completion, unzip

2. Docker Setup

• Installs official Docker engine using Docker's secure bootstrap script.
• Adds your current user to the docker group so you don't have to type sudo for every command.
• Sets up Docker CLI shell completion rules under /etc/bash_completion.d/.

3. Astral uv (Python)

• Installs uv, a drop-in replacement for pip, pip-tools, and virtualenv written in Rust.
• Speeds up Python package installations by 10-100x.
• Registers uv shell autocompletion in your ~/.bashrc.

4. Custom Shell Aliases

Appends a dedicated block of developer aliases to your ~/.bashrc (safely and idempotently):

• gs $\rightarrow$ git status
• dco $\rightarrow$ docker compose
• dps $\rightarrow$ docker ps --format 'table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}'

5. System Optimizations

For large codebases, IDEs can quickly hit the default Linux file-watcher limit. The script increases fs.inotify.max_user_watches to 524288 inside /etc/sysctl.d/99-dev-tweaks.conf.

6. Node.js & FNM (Optional)

• Installs Fast Node Manager (fnm), an ultra-fast Node.js version manager written in Rust.
• Automatically downloads and configures the latest Node.js LTS version.

7. Rust Toolchain (Optional)

• Installs rustup — the official Rust toolchain installer — in non-interactive mode.
• Appends source ~/.cargo/env to all detected shell profiles so cargo, rustc, and rustup are available immediately after a terminal restart.
• Skips installation if rustc is already on $PATH.

8. Go Toolchain (Optional)

• Fetches the latest stable Go release version directly from go.dev/VERSION and downloads the official Linux tarball.
• Installs Go into /usr/local/go and cleans up the temporary archive.
• Injects both /usr/local/go/bin and ~/go/bin ($GOPATH/bin) into all shell profiles idempotently.

9. Starship Prompt (Optional)

• Installs Starship using the official one-line install script in --yes (non-interactive) mode.
• Appends the correct eval "$(starship init bash|zsh)" hook to each detected shell profile.
• Safe to re-run — a guard marker prevents duplicate hook entries.

10. Modern CLI Utilities (Optional)

• Installs fzf (fuzzy finder) for interactive command-line searches.
• Installs ripgrep (rg) for rapid recursive file searching.
• Installs bat (a cat clone with syntax highlighting) and configures a bat command redirect so it launches natively on Ubuntu.

11. Desktop IDEs (Optional / GUI-only)

• Automatically checks if a display server is running ($DISPLAY or $WAYLAND_DISPLAY) to avoid installing graphical programs on remote headless servers or minimal CLI containers.
• Installs VS Code via Microsoft's official GPG-signed APT repository (recommended over snap for system terminal shell integration).
• Installs PyCharm Community Edition via canonical classic snap packages.

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🔒 Security & Safety First

• Idempotent Execution: You can safely run this script multiple times. If Docker, uv, or specific aliases are already installed/present, the script will skip them.
• No Destructive Overwrites: The SSH key generator checks for the existence of ~/.ssh/id_ed25519 and will never overwrite your existing SSH keys.
• Non-Root Safety: Docker group permission changes are only applied to the actual user running the script, ensuring your root space stays clean.

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📚 Tools & Official Documentation

Below is a reference list of the tools managed by this script, complete with their official documentation links:

Tool	Category	Purpose	Documentation
Git	Core (Default)	Distributed version control system	git-scm.com
gh (GitHub CLI)	Core (Default)	Official command-line client for GitHub	cli.github.com
Docker / Compose	Core (Default)	Containerization engine & multi-container manager	docs.docker.com
Astral uv	Core (Default)	Blazing fast Python package installer and resolver	docs.astral.sh/uv
curl	Core (Default)	Command-line tool for transferring data with URLs	curl.se
jq	Core (Default)	Command-line JSON parser and processor	jqlang.github.io/jq
htop	Core (Default)	Interactive process viewer and system monitor	htop.dev
vim	Core (Default)	Terminal-based text editor	vim.org
lsof	Core (Default)	Utility to list open files and network ports	man7.org/lsof
build-essential	Core (Default)	Compiler toolchains (gcc, g++, make, etc.)	gcc.gnu.org
OpenSSH	Core (Default)	Secure remote login protocol and agents	openssh.com
tldr	Core (Default)	Simplified, community-driven terminal man pages	tldr.sh
bash-completion	Core (Default)	Tab-completion rules for command-line tools	github.com/scop
unzip	Core (Default)	Archive extraction; required by fnm and other tools	Ubuntu APT
FNM (Node Manager)	Optional (Prompt)	Blazing-fast Node.js version manager in Rust	fnm.vercel.app
Node.js (LTS)	Optional (Prompt)	JavaScript runtime environment	nodejs.org
fzf	Optional (Prompt)	Command-line fuzzy finder for files and history	github.com/fzf
ripgrep (rg)	Optional (Prompt)	Line-oriented search tool (modern grep replacement)	github.com/ripgrep
bat	Optional (Prompt)	Cat clone with syntax highlighting & Git diffs	github.com/bat
Rust (rustup)	Optional (Prompt)	Systems programming language and toolchain manager	rustup.rs
Go (Golang)	Optional (Prompt)	Statically typed compiled programming language	go.dev
Starship	Optional (Prompt)	Cross-shell fast & customizable prompt	starship.rs
VS Code	Optional (GUI Only)	Standard graphical code editor	code.visualstudio.com
PyCharm Community	Optional (GUI Only)	Python integrated development environment	jetbrains.com/pycharm

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🛠️ Development & Formatting

To maintain consistent style rules and code quality, this project uses pre-commit git hook checks.

To set up the pre-commit hooks locally:

1. Install pre-commit (using uv or pip):

   uv tool install pre-commit
   # Or using pip:
   pip install pre-commit

2. Register the Git hooks:

   pre-commit install

Now, every time you run git commit, your files will automatically be formatted using shfmt and prettier, and validated using shellcheck.

To run the checks manually on all files:

pre-commit run --all-files

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you want to add support for more tools, shells (like Zsh/Oh My Zsh), or configurations:

1. Fork the Project.
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature).
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature').
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

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📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.