My Dotfiles

This repo is an experimental work in progress!

My operating system is Fedora Silverblue which is an atomic (immutable) operating system, so my aim is to provide a CLI customized toolbox work environment orientated around Neovim and associated CLI tooling

Requirements

Host System:

1. Modern Linux OS (Fedora Silverblue recommended)
2. podman
3. toolbox
4. dconf

Note: These are already installed on Fedora Silverblue

Dot file management

My dot files are managed in this Git repository via stow.

How Stow Works With My Dotfiles

My dotfiles are managed by GNU Stow. The make command invokes stow with the --dotfiles option. This symlinks the dot files from this repository into my home directory.

Using the --dotfiles option requires base directory naming conventions:

• Directories containing dot directories or files must be named starting with dot-
• Example: dot-config/ → ~/.config/, dot-local/ → ~/.local/

The .stow-local-ignore file at the root excludes files from being stowed:

• README.md and Makefile are not stowed as they are in the .stow-local-ignore file.

Also any .* files in the root directory are also excluded from being stowed by default.

GitHub Actions Testing

I use GitHub actions to test the verify a stow deployment of my dot files into a fresh Linux environment. I use the ubuntu-latest runner. The workflow is defined in .github/workflows/default.yaml. The workflow runs checks to verify:

• make init creates required directories
• make (stow) deploys without errors

It doesn't test every aspect of my dot files, but it does provide a basic verification that the stow deployment works in a clean environment.

All my coding tools run inside a toolbox container. The toolbox container I use not really relevant to this repository. There is difficulty of running a toolbox container inside the GitHub actions runner. So with GitHub actions I mimic my toolbox environment by adding the CLI tools I use in my toolbox.

Checking Tool Configurations

Each tool I use may have a configuration file. For example, Neovim requires a configuration file at ~/.config/nvim/init.vim. These configuration files are provided in the dot-config/ directory. This allows me to test the stow deployment of my dot files in an environment that mimics my toolbox container without actually running a toolbox container.

Better tooling with better configurations

My dot files provide configurations for various CLI tools I use. The aim is to provide better configurations for these tools to improve my productivity. For example, my Neovim configuration provides a better coding experience with syntax highlighting, code completion, linting, and other features.

Deployment Instructions

⚠️ Warning: I don't recommend using my dot files as-is. They are tailored to my personal preferences and workflow. However, if you would like to use them as a starting point or reference, you can deploy them into your home directory.

Prerequisites:

# Clone the repository
mkdir -p ~/Projects
git clone https://github.com/grantmacken/dots.git ~/Projects/dots
cd ~/Projects/dots
# make check-tools script executable
chmod +x dot-local/bin/check-tools.sh
# verify required CLI tools are installed
dot-local/bin/check-tools.sh
# Create directories 
make init
# Deploy dot files
make

What gets deployed:

• dot-config/ → ~/.config/ (Neovim, systemd, containers configs)
• dot-local/bin/ → ~/.local/bin/ (executable scripts)
• dot-bashrc.d/ → ~/.bashrc.d/ (bash configuration snippets)