Dot Files

telegraph

Recently I rebooted my configuration files and wanted to document the process.

The Goal

I would like a set up that is portable, concise, and version controlled. The dream is I can sit down at a new machine, clone my dot files, and be up an running quickly.

Why Now

Over the past few months I have been experimenting with different editors to get a feel of what other options are out there. I gave Emacs another concerted effort as well as the Spacemacs distribution. VScode and Atom were also explored as options for more IDE like experiences. I found I was very stunted without vim keybindings for text navigation. I am completely brainwashed by modal editing. Many editors have a vim mode which was great, but then I had to figure out how to implement my own custom key maps to match my .vimrc. This became a real pain switching between editors and having to configure each one.

The root of the problem stems from the configuration that went into my original .vimrc. I went overboard with remapping keys and setting lots of options. I think early on I was too quick to add a convenient remap than learning how it’s done the default way. Many packages were also installed using Tim Popes pathogen.vim which was convent at the time. I stuck with pathogen for many years but found myself wanting more out of my vim package manager.

I figured it was time to start fresh!

Burn It All Down

campfire

I wanted to clean up my vim configuration as well as my terminal set up. I have been using zsh for many years now as a drop in replacement for bash. I moved my .vimrc and .zshrc to a back up folder in case this experiment went sideways.

I set up a folder called dotfiles which contains a bash script that symlink’s the configurations into the root directory. I like this setup because I can easily version control all of my configurations.

Vim Configuration

For a package manager I went with vim-plug a “Minimalist Vim Plugin Manager”. To install packages it is as simple as listing the plugins between begin and end.
```
" Plugins will be downloaded under the specified directory.
call plug#begin('~/.vim/plugged')
```
What is a .vimrc without some packages by Tim Pope! I tried not to go crazy. The vim-sensible package is a set of universal defaults that most people agree on. I also love his vim-commentary package for quickly commenting lines. Pope’s packages are written in a way that they feel like part of base vim, and less like a hack.
```
" Tim Pope writes essential plugins
Plug 'tpope/vim-sensible'
Plug 'tpope/vim-commentary'
```
For colors I have been using the badwolf color scheme for many years and I still love it. I recently found out that it also comes with a goodwolf color scheme which is a minimal take on color.
```
" Steve Losh makes pretty things
Plug 'sjl/badwolf'
```
I was interested in using some snippets so I went with utilsnips as the engine and vim-snippets as the catalog.
```
" A snippet engine and snippet catalog
Plug 'SirVer/ultisnips'
Plug 'honza/vim-snippets'
```
I have been editing lots of tex files recently so I install vimtex to better handle latex specific problems
```
" Latex plugin
Plug 'lervag/vimtex'
```

Close out the vim-plug command

" Plugins become visible to Vim after this call.
call plug#end()

Set up the color
```
colorscheme badwolf
```

I messed around with the tabs. I don’t know where I fall on the tabs vs. spaces debate but at the moment spaces are taking precedent.

" show existing tab with 4 spaces width
set tabstop=4
" when indenting with '>', use 4 spaces width
set shiftwidth=4
" On pressing tab, insert 4 spaces
set expandtab

Again I have been editing a lot of tex these days so I set up vim to assume I will always be editing LaTeX files instead of plain TeX.
```
" Vim defaults to plaintex. I only ever write LaTeX
let g:tex_flavor = "latex"
```

I am keeping an eye on things getting out of control, but right now things are feeling good.

Zsh Configuration

I have been please with the oh-my-zsh library of packages and configuration options.

For a theme I went with avit which was already very similar.
```
ZSH_THEME="avit"
```
The git package came already installed and I added autojump for better navigation.
```
plugins=(git autojump)
```
I set my default editor to vim
```
export EDITOR='vim'
```
I added a couple of lines to get my conda environment working correctly
```
. /Users/eitanlees/miniconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
conda activate
```
Finally there were a few aliases I have found convenient. The latex related ones just output all generated files to a folder tmp rather than in the current directory. The lock alias is mac specific, so I can quickly lock my computer from the terminal. I think I could live without the clear alias, so it’s on the short list to be cut.
```
alias c='clear'
alias pdflatex='mkdir -p tmp; pdflatex -output-directory tmp'
alias latexmk='mkdir -p tmp; latexmk -pdf -outdir=tmp'
alias lock='/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend'
```

Moving Forward

I hope that I can reign in the desire to go overboard with configuration. I still haven’t created a .bashrc yet. Since bash is by far the most common shell I encounter in the wild, I should have a minimal configuration at hand.

I am keeping all my dotfiles on github (eitanlees/dotfiles) and they are likely to change in the future.

Best of luck future Eitan!