Personal dotfiles

Small, explicit dotfiles for my local development environment.

This repo keeps only the dotfiles I actively use. It avoids shell frameworks, editor plugins, terminal themes, and other bundled tooling unless they are clearly needed.

Design principle: keep global dotfiles for personal machine and editor defaults; leave project-specific build artifacts and team conventions to each project's own configuration. Target macOS first, while keeping the configuration Linux-friendly where practical; platform-specific settings should be explicit and harmless on other systems.

Contents

• zprofile and zshrc: shared, framework-free shell environment, prompt, history, completion, and aliases.
• vimrc: plain Vim configuration without plugins.
• gitconfig and gitignore: global Git defaults and ignores.
• inputrc and editrc: command-line editing defaults.
• hushlogin: quiet login shells.
• config/alacritty/alacritty.toml: Alacritty terminal preferences.
• config/herdr/config.toml: Herdr terminal workspace preferences.

Requirements

The installer only creates symlinks; it does not install applications, packages, fonts, or Herdr plugins.

• Zsh, Vim, and Git.
• Alacritty and Herdr for the managed terminal configuration.
• Cascadia Code NF, selected explicitly by the Alacritty configuration.
• zsh-syntax-highlighting for optional interactive command highlighting.
• The Tokscale Dashboard Herdr plugin for the Cmd-U binding.

On macOS, install the optional Zsh highlighter with:

brew install zsh-syntax-highlighting

Install the Herdr plugin with:

herdr plugin install astkaasa/herdr-tokscale-dashboard

Install

Run:

./install.sh

The installer links managed files into $HOME. Existing files replaced by links are moved to a timestamped backup directory under ~/.dotfiles.backup/.

The repository's shared zprofile and zshrc are linked under the same names in ~/.config/zsh/. The installer keeps ~/.zprofile and ~/.zshrc as regular, machine-owned files containing a single source line. This lets package installers append their own setup without modifying the repository through a symlink. Existing regular files are preserved, and the source line is prepended when missing.

Machine-specific shell configuration

Shared shell settings belong in the repository's zprofile and zshrc. Keep their PATH configuration limited to stable defaults such as Homebrew and ~/.local/bin; the shared zshrc uses Zsh's tied path/PATH parameters to ignore missing directories and remove duplicates.

Keep machine-specific environment variables in the regular ~/.zprofile and interactive settings or paths in the regular ~/.zshrc. Package-managed snippets should remain in the standard form written by their installers. Neither machine entry file is managed as a repository symlink.

Do not add a project virtual environment such as .venv/bin to the global PATH. Activate it from the project, or use a project-scoped environment tool such as direnv.

Keep machine-specific Git identity and credential helpers in ~/.gitconfig.user, for example:

[user]
  name = your-name
  email = your-email@example.com