dotfiles

Setting up a terminal on a computer—including configurations, environment variables, and package installations—requires significant effort. Moreover, when working on multiple computers, synchronizing all these settings becomes a major challenge.

This dotfiles project provides a framework for managing these setups across macOS and Ubuntu shell environments.

Prerequisite

• macOS or Ubuntu
• zsh
• curl or wget

Basic Installation

• (Optional) Specify the installation path

  # defaults to "$HOME/dotfiles" if not specified
  export DOTFILES_ROOT_DIR="$HOME/dotfiles"

• Install dotfiles by running the curl or wget command in the terminal.

  Method	Command
  curl	zsh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tainvecs/dotfiles/refs/heads/main/.dotfiles/script/install.zsh)"
  wget	zsh -c "$(wget -O- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tainvecs/dotfiles/refs/heads/main/.dotfiles/script/install.zsh)"

Overview

There are three main directories in this dotfiles framework.

dotfiles
├── .dotfiles
├── .local
└── user

• dotfiles/.dotfiles

  • dotfiles framework code, such as libraries, environment variables, and scripts
  • Users should not need to access or change the code files in this directory.

• dotfiles/.local

  • The local directories (including XDG base directories) for user-specific configurations, cached data, state files, and binaries.
  • This directory will be automatically generated after dotfiles installation and initialization.
  • Files in this directory are not tracked by the dotfiles Git repository.
  • Generally, users should not need to access or change the files in this directory, except for tasks like clearing cache files.

• dotfiles/user

  • Directory for user-customized configs, environment variables, and secrets.
  • Users can manually create config or secret files to customize tools such as ssh.
  • Files in this directory are not tracked by the dotfiles Git repository.
  • Files in this directory will be symlinked to dotfiles/.local and sourced when the shell starts.
  • For more information, please check out the examples at dotfiles-user.

Uninstallation

Simply remove the following commands from your ~/.zshenv file.

export DOTFILES_ROOT_DIR=/custom/path/dotfiles
source /custom/path/dotfiles/.dotfiles/env/dotfiles.env

In addition, you can back up the dotfiles/user directory and then purge the dotfiles from your system by removing the dotfiles repository.

rm -r /custom/path/dotfiles

Reference

• thoughtbot / dotfiles
• mathiasbynens / dotfiles
• ohmyzsh / ohmyzsh
• gpakosz / .tmux