Dotfiles

I’ve always been fascinated by the culture behind dotfiles, those files that people have automated to be installed on a new computer to have everything set up just the way they want. Configuration for development programs, terminal settings, aliases, colors… But the truth is that I’ve only seen all of this from afar. I was very interested, but all these kinds of things come from necessity, and I’ve never had this necessity—until now.

Recently, I have been developing on other computers and also had to set up a new computer at work. With this, I realized that I really like having all my workspace ready to go as quickly as possible. It’s not just about the time, but solving a simple problem: you always forget something. And here is where dotfiles come in handy.

I’ll just point you to GitHub dotfiles page, which is a really good start. I’m also a big fan of Zach Holman, and I recommend you take a look at his setup.

My recommendation is that you read A LOT before doing anything. Honestly, this is not difficult, but there are a lot of little things that you have to think about, and that people have already solved, so it’s better to document yourself before writing a single line of code.

For now, I’m using Dotbot to bootstrap my setup, and combining this with some scripts that I already had, it’s working fine for now. There are still some things that I want to improve, but what I have now is already useful.

So now it’s your turn!