Dotfiles

Shell, tmux, vim and terminal configs for Linux, macOS and WSL2. bash is the baseline; zsh, tmux and the vim IDE layer on top and fall back quietly when missing.

Quick start

Review the script before running it.

curl, production cowboy mode

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rlongstaff/dotfiles/main/install.sh | sh

curl, review code first

curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rlongstaff/dotfiles/main/install.sh
less install.sh && sh install.sh

git

git clone https://github.com/rlongstaff/dotfiles && dotfiles/install.sh

Dry run against a throwaway home

./install.sh /tmp/fakehome

• Files already in $HOME are backed up to ~/.dotfiles.bak.<timestamp> before linking.
• Put your name and email in ~/.gitconfig.local; the tracked .gitconfig includes it.
• Undo with ./uninstall.sh, then copy back the backup you want.

What you get

Bare minimum

• Same shell config, prompt and aliases on every box (bash or zsh).
• vim core settings: indent, mouse, statusline, clipboard yank.
• Symlink installer with backups, an audit (scripts/check.sh) and an uninstaller.
• One shared ssh-agent per host, and OS-aware comfort dirs (~/prj, ~/bin, ~/tmp, ~/docs).

With enhancements

• tmux autostart, including a nested, remote session per ssh login.
• vim IDE: file tree, LSP, completion, go-to, diagnostics and a debugger.
• Every key binding in keys.yaml and every color in colors.yaml, rendered to kitty, gnome-terminal, tmux, the shells and vim, with generated cheatsheets.
• Unified copy and paste across system, tmux and vim.

Software and minimum versions

Software	Minimum	For
bash	3.2	required
vim	8.x	required
git	any	required
curl, tar	any	curl install only
zsh	5.x	optional
tmux	3.2	optional
vim	9.0	LSP
vim with +python3	8.x	debugger
gopls, delve	any recent	Go LSP and debugger
yq (mikefarah)	v4	re-rendering keys and colors
kitty, gnome-terminal, iTerm2	any recent	terminal configs

Packages, install commands and what happens without each item: guide, Requirements.

Docs

• Guide: requirements, keyboard standard, vim defaults, vim Go IDE.
• Keyboard cheatsheet: every binding, generated from keys.yaml.
• Color cheatsheet: every color, generated from colors.yaml.

Notes

• Installing to $HOME symlinks files into the checkout, so edits to ~/.vimrc and friends edit the repo. The full list is LINKS in scripts/lib.sh.
• Re-run one step with scripts/install.d/<step>.sh.
• Edit keys.yaml or colors.yaml, then run scripts/keyboard/render.sh or scripts/colors/render.sh. Never hand-edit a file that starts with GENERATED.

Making it yours

• curl install: nothing tracks it, edit freely.
• git install: git checkout -b my_config, commit your changes, then periodically git fetch && git merge main.
• Or install to another directory and symlink only what you want.

Comfort dirs

~/prj holds projects and ~/src links to it, so repos live at ~/src/github.com/<user>/<repo>. ~/docs links to the OS's Documents folder.