Dotfiles (macOS)

• Dotfiles (macOS)
  • Personal dotfiles - philosophy
  • Commands
  • Fresh macOS setup
  • Day-to-day refresh
  • Inspiration

Personal dotfiles - philosophy

Warning: these dotfiles are currently a work in progress (not yet complete). Feel free to take Inspiration from them, but best not to use them as is.

This is a repo of my personal dotfiles for macOS. The main philosophy is to use

• A modern Unix workflow.
• The XDG directory specification.

Commands

There are two commands. Both are idempotent; pick by where you are.

Command	Use it when	What it does
./bootstrap	Fresh Mac, OR not sure of state.	Installs Homebrew + Dropbox cask, opens Dropbox, waits for sign-in (one human pause), waits for the dotfiles repo to sync, then execs ./install from the synced location.
./install	You're already in ~/Dropbox/repos/dotfiles and just want a dotbot refresh.	Runs dotbot: symlinks, Brewfile, npm, macOS defaults.

Flags (both commands accept):

• --no-hints — suppress post-install reminders.

Make aliases (no behavioral difference): make bootstrap, make dotbot_install.

./bootstrap re-runs are cheap because every phase has a skip-check (Homebrew installed? Dropbox cask installed? app running? signed in? repo synced?). On an already-configured machine it will fast-forward through all five detection phases and hand off to ./install. Ctrl-C is safe at any time; the next invocation resumes at the unfinished phase.

Fresh macOS setup

git clone --recurse-submodules --remote-submodules \
  git@github.com:shamindras/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles-bootstrap
cd ~/dotfiles-bootstrap
./bootstrap

You'll be asked to sign in to Dropbox once, in the GUI window the script opens. After sign-in detection, ./bootstrap waits for ~/Dropbox/repos/dotfiles to sync, then runs ./install from there. The temp clone at ~/dotfiles-bootstrap is no longer needed afterward and can be removed.

Day-to-day refresh

From the synced repo:

cd ~/Dropbox/repos/dotfiles
./install              # or: make dotbot_install

./install applies macOS system defaults (scripts/setup/setup-macos), which needs sudo and may require a logout/reboot for some changes to take effect.

Inspiration

These dotfiles have been mainly inspired by the following people. I thank them for openly sharing their work.

Dotfile Sources

• Alicia Sykes' dotfiles.
• Mattmc3's zshrc1 config.
• Josh Medeski's dotfiles.
• Josean Martinez's dotfiles and accompanying YouTube videos.
• Shivan's zk config
• Mathias Bynen's dotfiles and in particular his macOS dotfiles.
• Kevin Suttle and his macOS-Defaults project, which aims to provide better documentation for ~/.macos. This is inspired by Mathias Bynen's .macos settings.
• Dylan McDowell's zsh config
• Linkarzu's neovim markdown setup and his dotfiles.