What's in there?

This is meant to be a 'minimal', distraction free setup. No fancy statusbars, no crazy window decorations, no distractions. With these dotfiles I want to automate as much as possible and keep UI clutter to a minimum for a distraction-free environment.

The only exception for this is currently Neovim, where I'm using LazyVim to set up everything. I had too many issues with my config breaking and I hope, by 'outsourcing' it, it will break less often.

I don't recommend running the setup script on your machine unless you understand what it does.
I do recommend having a look through the various config files. Below is a rough overview.

If you are interested in the CI setup, look below.

Window manager: i3

• i3bar is only shown when the modifier key is pressed
• i3bar only shows the workspaces, time and tray programs

Terminal: Alacritty + tmux

Alacritty (vs. urxvt) improves various things for me:

• Much better HiDPI support
• Automatic config reloading (no more need for xrdb -merge and starting a new terminal
• Emoji support ✨

The tmux status display has no additional information apart from windows.

Shell: zsh

• Custom zsh prompt/theme
• CTRL+Z to send jobs to background and to foreground
• No oh-my-zsh, because it makes things slow
• Same completion as oh-my-zsh

Editor: Vim

• Using LazyVim for the core IDE setup
• Support for 'line' cursor shape in insert mode if using nvim
• Turns syntax off for large files
• Open the current file in browser (Useful for markdown)
• Return to the same line when you reopen a file
• Switch between tmux and vim panes using the same shortcuts

Git

• Pre-defined commit message with suggestions

Ruby

• Basic rubocop.yml
• irbrc - start pry if possible
• gemrc - never download docs

Scripts in bin/

• off Will ask you to do a daily review, time tracking and if you are fine with your journaling and then suspend the machine.
• clean_rails cleans cache and log files in rails projects

Installation

System bootstrapping

Just run the following command:

wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/phansch/dotfiles/raw/main/setup -O - | bash -s -- -s

This will:

1. Setup Ansible
2. Upgrade and autoclean system packages
3. Clone the dotfiles (or pull if they exist already)
4. Run the base playbook to install the prerequisites
5. Run the dotfiles playbook to symlink the dotfiles
6. Print the command to run the optional playbooks

Just the dotfiles

If you just want the dotfiles, clone them and use stow as below.

git clone https://github.com/phansch/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

cd $HOME

# Install stow
sudo apt-get install stow

# To install the ruby dotfiles. Replace `ruby` with the stow package you want.
# See ansible/playbooks/dotfiles.yml for a complete list of the stow packages.
stow ruby --verbose=1 --target=$HOME/ --dir=$HOME/.dotfiles

Environment variables

Some scripts, like the off script, use environment variables for configuration. You can set these in your ~/.zshrc.local which is sourced by ~/.zshrc automatically.

The current environment variables are:

Development

Since it can be a bit problematic to test changes to the configuration on the actual machine where you want to make them, you can use Vagrant to test changes to the configuration.

You will need Vagrant and Virtualbox installed, then you can run:

vagrant up

You can then either use vagrant ssh or connect to the VM through Virtualbox to have a GUI.

Re-running a failed ansible playbook

ansible-playbook ansible/playbooks/<the-playbook>.yml

Running the tests

run-parts test/

CI Info

CI is trying to mirror a full Ubuntu installation in order to ensure the setup script doesn't fail.

All ansible playbooks are run on CI. The build will fail if:

• Any ansible playbook has not finished successfully
• i3 config is invalid
• vint detects mistakes in init.vim
• yaml-lint finds any issues
• ansible-playbook --syntax-check has not finished successfully
• shellcheck found errors

Have a look at the .travis.yml and Dockerfile to see how it works.