Terminalify

Why?

• Seems simpler.
• Easier to clone the setup to different machines.
• Working in the terminal helps me stay more focused.

Artifacts

• My personal dotfiles

Possible spawns

• Basic approach to using GNU Stow for dotfiles
• Using Stow to dynamically source shell plugins

Log

2025.04.22

Got ssh setup.

Tinkering with GPG setup and generating a master key and subkeys. Going to peruse this article.

2025.04.15

I'd like to setup my new computer using my dotfiles. Before I do that, they need to be refined a bit. Here's a laundry list of things I need to do.

• [x] curl and execute the bootstrap script
• [x] install eza when stowing zsh config
• [x] install alacritty when stowing alacritty config
• [x] pare down brew config to bare necessities (firefox, 1password-cli) and things that wouldn't be installed when stowing other packages
• [x] install gh when stowing the git config
• [x] Move gh config into git stow package

Pretty much everything is setup except a few stragglers.

• [ ] ssh
• [ ] secrets. This may be a good use case for op
• [ ] a random terminfo directory
• [ ] separate aliases out by stow package
• [ ] it'd be cool to store my macOS settings on the dotfiles as well

I was trying to not need to install the 1password app, but I think I probably should. I was wavering on using it for ssh, but I think it's pretty great for that. I'm also going to lean into it for storing secrets since the cli tool makes it extremely convenient to inject them. I bookmarked a couple of blog posts to get started.

2025.04.04

• Played with gitsigns a bit. Very cool. It'll take time to get into the habit of staging small portions of files, but I can see it being tremendously useful.

2025.04.03

• Got kickstart.nvim going and am already tweaking it. In fact, I'm using nvim to write this and have it automatically formatted using deno_fmt.
• Think I properly setup rust-analyzer and denols with nvim. Very straightforward. We'll see if there's any quirks when I actually go to use them.

2025.04.02

• Started going down the rabbit hole of configuring nvim. Got as far as installing lazy.nvim before I had to start doing actual work. I have some learning to do, but I think building up a reasonable config is the way to go. I'd add things as needed instead of having a bunch of stuff I never use.

2025.03.27

• Watched this video on setting up nvim. Doesn't look nearly as painful as expected.

2025.03.26

• Added Rust config. I like the idea of stowing shell scripts into $ZDOTDIR so they can be loaded on sourcing. For Rust, I added some env variables, automatically install rustup if it's not there, and setup completions for rustup and cargo. That way everything is installed correctly by just running stow rust and source $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc

2025.03.25

• Added a basic bootstrapping script. It installs brew and some core dependencies. It creates the XDG directories and ZDOTDIR. And then stows a couple of the core configs, namely zsh and tmux.

2025.03.20

• Just went ahead and installed deno through brew. I was using asdf to manage multiple versions before, but I'm not sure I want to go that route unless absolutely necessary. This GH issue may hint at a way to do this without a separate tool.
• Migrated git config.
• Migrated helix config.
• Tweaked fzf.
• Started using eza instead of ls and tree.

2025.03.19

• Migrated tmux config.
• Think I sorted out colors in terminal and tmux.
• Setup a brewfile to track installed dependencies. Will need to setup some aliases to brew bundle add [name] and brew bundle install, etc.

2025.03.18

• Got most of my zsh configuration done. Not entirely ready to cutover yet, but getting there. Or maybe I am, and I just need to start working in it to feel the pain to improve it.
• This was an interesting find. Apparently the git completions that ship with homebrew's version are inferior than those provided by default with zsh.

2025.03.17

• Started using zap to manage plugins. It's very simple. Downside is that git needs to be installed, but it probably will be anyway.

2025.03.12

• Made a few tweaks to .zshenv and moved it to a new dotfiles repo to facilitate managing them with stow.
• I'd like to be able to switch between configurations easily. Since I explicitly set $ZDOTDIR, my thought is that I can just create two and swap between them using that env var. If that doesn't work out for some reason, I also set $XDG_CONFIG_DIR. I suppose I could swap that instead.

2025.03.11

• Try using GNU stow for dotfiles. Seems the simplest.

2025.03.10

• I'm interested in trying out Neovim. Helix is cool, but it seems a bit bloated for me. And the plugin system is lagging. Neovim now has LSP support built-in, is built on Vim, has a super mature plugin system (lua seems great). I think it's worth a go.
• Need to yet again sort out my dotfiles. This may be a good pattern to copy.
• I'd also like to get off omz. This article may be helpful.

2025.03.07

• Had this thought after exploring Derek Sivers /uses page.