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Dotfiles (Tom Ryder)
====================

Personal repository of dotfiles. This is for those settings that migrate well
from machine to machine and that I consider safe to publish. You’re welcome to
use them, but you’ll probably want to fork it to remove anything peculiar to me
or my setup that I’ve left in here.

```bash
$ git clone git://github.com/tejr/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
```

It’s more likely you’ll want to read the configuration files and find snippets
relevant to your particular workflow.

Tools
-----

Configuration is included for:

*   [ack](http://beyondgrep.com/) — Perl alternative to `grep(1)`, including a
    copy of its standalone version
*   [Bash](https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/) — GNU Bourne-Again Shell,
    including a `~/.profile` configured to work with most Bourne-compatible
    shells
*   [cURL](http://curl.haxx.se/) — Command-line tool for transferring data with
    URL syntax
*   [Git](http://git-scm.com/) — Distributed version control system
*   [GnuPG](http://www.gnupg.org/) — GNU Privacy Guard, for private
    communication and file encryption
*   [i3](http://i3wm.org/) — Tiling window manager
*   [Mutt](http://www.mutt.org/) — Terminal mail user agent
*   [`mysql(1)`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/mysql) — Command-line MySQL client
*   [Ncmpcpp](http://ncmpcpp.rybczak.net/) — ncurses music player client
*   [Newsbeuter](http://www.newsbeuter.org/) — Terminal RSS/Atom feed reader
*   [Perl::Critic](http://search.cpan.org/~thaljef/Perl-Critic-1.118/lib/Perl/Critic.pm)
    — Static analysis tool for Perl code
*   [`psql(1)`](http://linux.die.net/man/1/psql) — Command-line PostgreSQL
    client
*   [Readline](http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html) — GNU
    library for user input used by Bash, MySQL, and others
*   [Taskwarrior](http://taskwarrior.org/projects/show/taskwarrior) —
    Command-line task list manager
*   [tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net/) — Terminal multiplexer similar to GNU
    Screen
*   [rxvt-unicode](http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/rxvt-unicode.html) — Fork of
    the rxvt terminal emulator with Unicode support
*   [Vim](http://www.vim.org/) — Vi IMproved, a text editor
*   [X11](http://www.x.org/wiki/) — Windowing system with network transparency
    for Unix

The configurations for Bash, Mutt, tmux, and Vim are the most expansive and
most likely to be of interest. The i3 configuration is mostly changed to make
window switching behave like Vim windows and Tmux panes do. There’s a fair few
resources defined for rxvt-unicode. Otherwise, the rest of the configuration
isn’t too distant from the defaults.

Installation
------------

There’s an installation script, but it’s pretty bare-bones, so don’t run it
without reading it first. You’ll need to have a recent enough version of Git to
support [submodules](http://git-scm.com/book/en/Git-Tools-Submodules) for this
to work.

To install the core terminal-only files (ack, Bash, cURL, Git, Vim), use the
following:

```bash
$ ~/.dotfiles/install
```

You can add any combination of the following options to add configuration for
other tools:

*   `-d``mysql(1)` and `psql(1)`
*   `-g` — GnuPG
*   `-m` — Mutt
*   `-n` — Ncmpcpp
*   `-r` — Newsbeuter
*   `-t` — tmux
*   `-x` — X11

The script will prompt you about replacing old files. If you’re brave/insane,
you can pipe `yes(1)` into it to accept all the replacements:

```bash
$ yes | ~/.dotfiles/install -dgmnrtx
```

Shell
-----

My `.profile` and other files in `sh` are written in Bourne/POSIX shell script
so that they can be parsed by any Bourne-compatible shell, including the `dash`
shell used as the system shell on modern Debian-derived systems. Individual
scripts called by `.profile` are saved in `.profile.d` and iterated on login
for ease of management. All of these boil down to exporting variables
appropriate to the system and the software it has available.

My interactive and scripting shell of choice is Bash; as a GNU/Linux admin who
ends up installing Bash on BSD machines anyway, I very rarely have to write
Bourne-compatible scripts, so all of those files are replete with Bashisms.

My `.bash_profile` calls `.profile` for variable exports, and then runs
`.bashrc` for interactive shells. Subscripts are kept in `.bashrc.d`, and all
are loaded for the creation of any new interactive shell. The contents of this
directory changes all the time depending on the host, and only specific scripts
in it are versioned; the rest are ignored by `.gitignore`.

As I occasionally have work on very old internal systems, my Bash is written to
work with [any version 2.05a or
newer](http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/scripting/bashchanges), a few versions
after the less error-prone `[[` test syntax was introduced. This is why I use
older syntax for certain things such as appending items to arrays:

```bash
array=("${array[@]}" "$item")
```

Compare this to the much nicer syntax available since 3.1-alpha1, which
actually works for arrays with sparse indexes, unlike the above syntax:

```bash
array+=("$item")
```

Where I do use features that are only available in versions of Bash newer than
2.05a, such as newer `shopt` options or `PROMPT_DIRTRIM`, they are only run
after testing `BASH_VERSINFO` appropriately.

When I use any other Bourne-compatible shell, I’m generally happy to accept its
defaults for interactive behavior.

My prompt looks something like this:

![Bash prompt](prompt.png)

It expands based on context to include these elements in this order:

*   Whether in a Git, Mercurial, or Subversion repository, and punctuation to
    show whether there are local modifications at a glance
*   The number of running background jobs
*   The exit status of the last command, if non-zero

This is all managed within the `prompt` function. There’s some mildly hacky
logic on `tput` codes included such that it should work correctly for most
common terminals using both `termcap(5)` and `terminfo(5)`, including \*BSD
systems. It’s also designed to degrade gracefully for eight-color and no-color
terminals.

Mutt
----

My mail is kept in individual Maildirs under `~/Mail`, with `inbox` being where
most unfiltered mail is sent. I use
[Getmail](http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/),
[Procmail](http://www.procmail.org/), and
[MSMTP](http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/); the configurations for these are not
included here. I make heavy use of GnuPG for email—everything is signed by
default, and I encrypt whenever I have a public key available for the
recipient. The GnuPG interfacing is done with
[GPGme](http://www.gnupg.org/related_software/gpgme/), rather than defining
commands for each crypto operation. I wrote [an article about this
setup](http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/linux-crypto-email/) if it sounds appealing.

tmux
----

These are just generally vi-friendly settings, not much out of the ordinary.
Note that the configuration presently uses a hard-coded 256-color colorscheme,
and uses subshells rather than login shells, with an attempt to control the
environment to stop shells thinking they have access to an X display—I’m forced
to use PuTTY a lot at work, and I don’t like Xming very much.

The configuration for Bash includes a `tmux` function designed to make `attach`
into the default command if no arguments are given and sessions do already
exist. The default command is normally `new-session`.

Vim
---

The majority of the `.vimrc` file is just setting options, with a few mappings.
I try not to deviate too much from the Vim defaults behaviour in terms of
interactive behavior and keybindings.

The configuration is extensively commented, mostly because I was reading
through it one day and realised I’d forgotten what half of it did. Plugins are
loaded using @tpope’s [pathogen.vim](https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen).

License
-------

Public domain. It’s just configuration, do whatever you like with it if any of
it’s useful to you. If you’re feeling generous, you could always buy me a beer
next time you’re in New Zealand.