Mehdi Kabab's dotfiles

Manage backup, restore, and installation of my environments since 2011. Based on the XDG Base Directory Specification and uses GNU Stow to maintain symlinks to my home directory. Mainly to reduce the mess in my $HOME 🍺

Preview of my Neovim interface

Contents

As Front-end developer, I am using CLI in my day-to-day workflow. The tools I use most frequently have their configuration versioned in this repository:

• Kitty as terminal emulator.
• Zsh as main shell with zim to manage shell plugins and Starship prompt.
• Neovim as main editor and visual editor.
• fzf as command-line fuzzy finder 🌸
• ripgrep as search and replace tool.
• fd as fast and user-friendly alternative to find.
• Lazygit as git Terminal UI (TUI).

Linux

I use Fedora with Wayland, switching between GNOME Desktop Environment and the Sway compositor. These dotfiles help me:

• configure packages repos
• install essential packages
• setup multimedia capabilities
• setup GNOME
• setup Sway
• backup configurations

macOS

I also use macOS in my daily life. Homebrew is my packages manager.

Installation

Warning
This repository covers my personal needs. I do not recommend that you run the setup or installation tasks without reviewing the code and understanding its impact. Use at your own risk!

You can start by cloning the repository.

$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/piouPiouM/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
$ cd ~/.dotfiles

Note
I use ~/.dotfiles as the destination directory because an alias allows me to directly edit the folder from any location: dotfiles.

Installation à la carte

The best option for controlling your environment: install only what you need. However, 3 tasks will be required to ensure that the other automated tasks run smoothly:

$ make install-dirs install-stow install-links

Now you can browse the available tasks using the make help command.

Fresh operating system installation?

These instructions are for setting up new macOS or Fedora operating system.

$ make setup

Warning
It's a WIP target knowing that I'm adding cross-platform support and that I don't reinstall my OS every day 😂

Install without alter the system?

$ make install

Local override

I use my dotfiles for personal and professional purposes, on distinct devices. Some information such as my git email address or business scripts, are stored specifically on each machine. To help me, some non-versioned configuration files can be loaded:

• Shell environment: ~/.local/share/zsh/exports.zsh.
• Git: ~/.local/share/git/config (copy local-config.sample).

App	Config file
Zsh environment	~/.local/share/zsh/exports.zsh
Git	~/.local/share/git/config (see local-config.sample)

Automated tasks

I heavily use Make to automatize my maintenance tasks.
Why Make? Because it's commonly shipped with *nix OS. I can directly launch the setup process without installing anything else.

Note
The accessible targets are dynamically created to be conform with the current OS. See include/make/ directory.

Display available tasks

$ make help

Output of make help

Targets:
  apps-install-difftastic          Install Difftastic, a structural diff tool.
  apps-install-fzf                 Install fzf (Fuzzy finder) from sources.
  apps-install-go                  Install Go applications.
  apps-install-lua                 Install Lua packages.
  apps-install-rust                Install Rust applications.
  apps-install-starship            Install Starship shell prompt.
  apps-uninstall-fzf               Uninstall fzf (Fuzzy finder).
  apps-update-fzf                  Update fzf (Fuzzy finder).
  apps-update-go                   Update Go applications.
  apps-update-rust                 Update Rust applications.
  backup                           Backup all settings.
  backup-brew                      Backup Homebrew packages.
  backup-npm                       Backup list of global npm packages.
  cleanup                          Clean all cache systems.
  help                             Print usage and this help message.
  icon-kitty-dark                  Apply a fancy dark icon to Kitty.
  icon-kitty-light                 Apply a fancy light icon to Kitty.
  install                          Install all the prerequisites.
  install-fonts                    Download and install fonts.
  install-fonts-codicon            Download and install Codicon font.
  install-fonts-ibm-plex           Download and install IBM Plex.
  install-fonts-nerd               Download and install Nerd Fonts.
  install-fonts-nerd-symbols-only  Download and install Nerd Fonts Symbols only.
  install-neovim                   Install or update Neovim nightly.
  install-neovim-dependencies      Install or update Neovim dependencies.
  install-packages-homebrew        Install Homebrew packages.
  install-themes                   Install themes for various tools.
  link-bin                         Link personnal binaries.
  link-home                        Generates only symlinks for the $HOME directory.
  restore-npm                      Install globaly npm packages.
  setup                            Perform setup of the device.
  setup-brew                       Install Homebrew and your packages.
  setup-dirs                       Creates the dotfiles tree structure.
  setup-links                      Generates all the symlinks.
  setup-neovim                     Setup Neovim environment.
  setup-npm                        Setup npm environment.
  theme-catppuccin                 Download Catppuccin theme.
  theme-github                     Download Github Contrib themes.
  theme-nightfox                   Download Nightfox theme.
  theme-rose-pine                  Download Rosé Pine theme.
  unlink-all                       Deletes all the symlinks.
  unlink-bin                       Delete symlink of custom binaries.
  unlink-home                      Deletes symlinks in the Home directory.
  update-packages-homebrew         Update Homebrew packages.
  update-packages-npm              Update globaly all npm packages.
  versions                         Print the version number of main programs.
Symlink targets:
[un]link-bash
[un]link-bat
[un]link-btop
[un]link-clifm
[un]link-environment
[un]link-fd
[un]link-fzf
[un]link-git
[un]link-go
[un]link-kitty
[un]link-lazygit
[un]link-nvim
[un]link-ranger
[un]link-ripgrep
[un]link-tmux
[un]link-zsh

Backup settings

$ make backup

Saves manually changed or added items in the setup directory:

What?	Linux	Fedora	macOS
DNF & Corp Repo		✅
Flatpak apps	✅	✅
GNOME extensions	✅	✅
GNOME settings	✅	✅
Homebrew packages			✅
NPM global packages	✅	✅	✅

Neovim

My Neovim configuration is the one that evolves most frequently. The plugins I use are no exception, as the Neovim ecosystem is so rich and constantly evolving. Please refer to the dedicated documentation for details of my configuration.

$ make setup-neovim

The task will install Neovim Nightly (which follows the HEAD of the git master branch) with the needed dependencies and providers.

Fonts

$ make install-fonts

Launch installation of used font-faces, mainly:

• JetBrains Mono as monospace font.
• IBM Plex for Obsidian.
• Nerd Fonts to enhance my TUI.

Note
Symbols of Nerd Fonts are installed by the install-fonts-nerd-symbols-only target, which also updates the list of symbols in Kitty's configuration and fzf-lua dedicated picker in order to always be up to date 🪄

Themes

After years of using the Iceberg theme for Vim and Neovim, I've decided to opt for these 3 themes, which also offer satisfactory light variations: Catppuccin, Rosé Pine and NightFox.

$ make install-themes

Where available, themes for these tools are also downloaded:

App	Catppuccin	Rosé Pine	NightFox
bat	✅	✅
btop	✅
fzf	✅	✅
kitty	✅	✅	✅
lazygit	✅
neovim	✅	✅	✅
rofi (linux)	✅	✅

Each theme can be individually installed or updated with the tasks theme-catppuccin, theme-rose-pine or theme-nightfox.

Each tool requires its own method for using a theme. This is automated with the colorscheme dark|light|soft-dark|soft-light shell command. The preference is saved in the ~/.theme file (home/dot-theme).

$  colorscheme light
⍻ Theme applied for Kitty
⍻ Theme applied for Bat
⍻ Theme applied for btop
⍻ Theme applied for fzf
⍻ Theme applied for Lazygit

Note
Neovim does not yet benefit from this automation.

---

FAQ

How do I force a task to run?

The way Make works means that some tasks will have no effect because the files downloaded or created already exist on disk. Use the -B flag to force execution of the task:

$ make theme-rose-pine # Do nothing

$ make -B theme-rose-pine # Force
• Download rose-pine.sh for fzf
• Download rose-pine-dawn.sh for fzf
• Download rose-pine-moon.sh for fzf
• Download rose-pine.rasi theme for Rofi
• Download rose-pine-dawn.rasi theme for Rofi
• Download rose-pine-moon.rasi theme for Rofi

Error zsh compinit: insecure directories, run compaudit for list

This error may occur when opening a new shell. The following command will certainly solve the problem:

$ compaudit | xargs chmod g-w

Error trash: error -1701

If you get this error when using Kitty, you need to reset the Finder access permissions using the following command. A confirmation prompt will be displayed the next time you run the trash command.

$ tccutil reset AppleEvents net.kovidgoyal.kitty

Thx to @gsbabil for the tip!