⚙️ My personal configuration files.

• dotfiles
  • Table of contents
  • Intro
  • Installation
  • Why
    • Why this repo
    • Why doing it this way
  • Some docs
    • The complexity of versioning dotfiles
      • Gitignore black magic
      • Different devices with different needs
    • i3 configuration
      • i3 keymaps
    • Neovim configuration
      • Neovim plugins
      • Neovim keymaps

Reading this document top-to-bottom will give you a basic understanding of what is going on in this repository.

Feel free to use this repository as a guideline if you think that it might fit your usecase.

Run the following command to install the dotfiles on laptop or desktop:

curl -sfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fraccs/dotfiles/refs/heads/main/.install.sh | sh

Run the following command to install the dotfiles on a different machine (make sure to set the DOTFILES_TARGET environment variable properly):

curl -sfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fraccs/dotfiles/refs/heads/main/.install.sh | [DOTFILES_TARGET=<laptop|desktop>] sh

The home directory is now a git repository and it is possible to run git commands in it, but only the files/directories listed in the .gitignore will be versioned.

The purpose of this repository is versioning my configuration files and keeping them syncronized between devices.

Turning the home directory into a git repository and "whitelisting" the files to track felt like the most logical way to version dotfiles, especially if the configuration is used on multiple devices where a change has to be reflected amongst all of them.

Versioning configuration files with git adds some complexity, this is because dotfiles have to be placed in specific locations of the home directory. Since the home directory contains many files that don't have to be versioned a .gitignore with a negation pattern is used to "whitelist" the files to track:

* # <- Ignore everything
!.config # <- I want to version stuff inside `.config`
!.config/nvim # <- I want to version stuff inside `.config/nvim`
!.config/nvim/** # <- Track .config/nvim/** (all files and subdirectories in it)
!.gitignore # <- Track .gitignore
...

Tracking every file in every subdirectory of .config/nvim/ can only be accomplished with the following negations:

*
!.config
!.config/nvim
!.config/nvim/**

Each of the 3 negations is needed because git in order to reach files inside .config/nvim/, must be able to reach .config/nvim first, and in order to reach .config/nvim, it must be able to reach .config first.

What if you had multiple devices where you'd like to use your dotfiles, but those devices (because of their nature) had slightly different needs from one another?

My current situation: my two main devices are a Huawei laptop (let's call it laptop from now on), and a tower desktop (from now on desktop). They both are single-boot ArchLinux installations and I'd like to use my dotfiles on both of them.

Well... "What's the problem?"

Problems start arising when, for instance, your devices have very different screen resolutions (like mine).

The simplest way to explain this is the kitty.conf file: on desktop kitty works completely fine with font_size 11.0 (same as the system's font size) whereas on laptop the minimum font_size to have an enjoyable experience is 15.0.

You see where I'm going with this...

Some config files can be somewhat different based on what system they are being used on. Of course I had to find a convenient way to make this all work without betraying the philosophy of this repository: one clone and you're done.

The solution I came up with leverages symlinks, to be precise the install script symlinks the config files that follow the format <name>.<desktop|laptop>[.<extension>] to <name>[.<extension>] depending on the hostname of the machine where the clone happened.

More information about the precise commit hash of the installed plugins can be found here: lazy-lock.json