Dotfiles Redux

This repository contains my personal dotfiles for setting up a productive developer environment on macOS, Linux, and containerized setups using Devcontainers. The goal is to provide a stable and maintainable environment that prioritizes pragmatic defaults over heavy customization.

Philosophy

• Pragmatism: I prefer tools and configurations that are stable, well supported, and widely adopted. Instead of tinkering with bleeding-edge setups, I rely on curated collections such as Oh My Zsh and "sensible" defaults for various applications.
• Portability: These dotfiles should work across macOS and Linux machines, as well as within containers. They are designed to be reliable whether installed system-wide or through a Devcontainer configuration.
• Consistency: The configuration aims to make pairing with others easy by sticking to intuitive shortcuts and well-known conventions. While these dotfiles improve my workflow, I can still work effectively without them if necessary.
• Reliability over Performance: Start-up speed is less important than ensuring things always work. Runtime performance should not be significantly degraded by these configurations.

Goals

1. Stable setup that rarely fails and is simple to maintain.
2. Easy installation on a fresh Mac or Linux system, with support for Devcontainers for containerized development.
3. Shared tools that follow common standards, enabling me to collaborate with others without friction.
4. Documentation that clearly explains the rationale behind each configuration choice.

Installation

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/ivy/dotfiles-redux.git && cd dotfiles-redux && ./install.sh

Advanced Usage

The installer supports various options and can pass arguments directly to chezmoi init:

# Force reinstall tools (if already installed)
REINSTALL_TOOLS=true ./install.sh

# Pass arguments to chezmoi init
./install.sh -- --force          # Force chezmoi to overwrite existing files
./install.sh -- --one-shot       # Use chezmoi's one-shot mode

# Combine options
REINSTALL_TOOLS=true ./install.sh -- --force

Environment Variables

You can customize the installation behavior with these environment variables:

• REINSTALL_TOOLS=true - Force reinstallation of tools even if already present
• BIN_DIR=/custom/path - Install binaries to a custom directory (default: ~/.local/bin)
• DEBUG=1 - Enable debug output during installation
• VERIFY_SIGNATURES=false - Disable signature verification (not recommended)

Non-Interactive Installation

For CI/CD or automated environments where no TTY is available, set these variables to bypass interactive prompts:

• GIT_USER_NAME="Your Name" - Git user name for commits
• GIT_USER_EMAIL="your.email@example.com" - Git user email for commits

Example for CI environments:

GIT_USER_NAME="CI User" GIT_USER_EMAIL="ci@example.com" ./install.sh

For a complete list of options, run ./install.sh --help.

License

This project is open source under the ISC License, credited to Ivy Evans.