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https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles

Settings for various tools I use.
https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles

bashrc dotfiles terminal tmux-conf vimrc wsl

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Settings for various tools I use.

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# dotfiles



Here's a bunch of settings for the [various tools I

use](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use). I also have a number of

[blog posts and

videos](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/tag/dev-environment-tips-tricks-and-tutorials)

related to my dev environment. There's also this documentation to help you get

everything installed and configured.



### Documentation



- [View screenshots](#screenshots) of the current set up and how to switch themes

- [Quickly get set up with these dotfiles](#quickly-get-set-up-with-these-dotfiles)

  - [Extra WSL 1 and WSL 2 steps](#extra-wsl-1-and-wsl-2-steps)

- [FAQ](#faq)

  - [How to personalize these dotfiles?](#how-to-personalize-these-dotfiles)

  - [How to add custom themes to the set-theme script?](#how-to-add-custom-themes-to-the-set-theme-script)

  - [How to use a different terminal in the set-theme script?](#how-to-use-a-different-terminal-in-the-set-theme-script)

  - [How to fix Vim taking a long time to open when inside of WSL?](#how-to-fix-vim-taking-a-long-time-to-open-when-inside-of-wsl)

- [About the author](#about-the-author)



## Screenshots



Since my dotfiles are constantly evolving and I tend to reference them in

videos, blog posts and various social media posts I thought it would be a good

idea to include a screenshot of each theme I used and how to switch to it.



I prefer using themes that have good contrast ratios and are clear to see in

video recordings. These dotfiles currently support easily switching between

[Gruvbox Community](https://github.com/gruvbox-community/gruvbox) and

[One](https://github.com/rakr/vim-one) but you can use any theme you'd like.



#### Theme progression



- January 2021 (Gruvbox Community)

- April 2020 (One)

- December 2018 (Gruvbox Community)



### Themes



These dotfiles include a `set-theme` script that you can run from your terminal

to set your theme to any of the themes listed below. This script takes care of

configuring your terminal, tmux, Vim and fzf's colors in 1 command.



If you don't like the included themes that's no problem. You can use whatever

you want, there's no limitations. You could choose to manually change the

colors or [adjust the set-theme

script](#how-to-add-custom-themes-to-the-set-theme-script) to add a custom

theme.



Ater installing these dotfiles you can run this from your terminal:



```sh

# Switch to a supported theme.

# Theme names are listed below near the screenshots.

# You can also run set-theme --help to see a list of themes.

set-theme [theme_name]



# Switch between dark and light backgrounds for the active theme.

set-theme --toggle-bg



# Switch the theme and toggle the background in 1 command.

set-theme [theme_name] --toggle-bg

```



*If you get an error about your terminal config file not being found please

review [this FAQ

item](#how-to-use-a-different-terminal-in-the-set-theme-script).*



#### Gruvbox Community



`set-theme gruvbox`



![Dotfiles](https://nickjanetakis.com/assets/blog/dotfiles-c85f20a61decb0d4676530ff4c65a818ee9b362cf9f380a76c9d44e1254d03f3.jpg)



#### One



`set-theme one`



![Dotfiles](https://nickjanetakis.com/assets/blog/dotfiles-2020-04-14-e375233b9aaf52ab5d8411ba28963f098094c91860e069a7f1ee45916a051929.jpg)



## Quickly Get Set Up with These Dotfiles



There's an `./install` script you can run to automate installing everything.

That includes installing system packages such as tmux, Vim, zsh, etc. and

configuring a number of tools in your home directory.



It even handles cloning down this repo. You'll get a chance to pick the clone

location in the script as well as view and / or change any system packages that

get installed.



The install script is optimized for:



- Ubuntu 20.04 LTS+ (native or WSL)

- Debian 11+ (Debian 10 will work if you enable backports for tmux)

- macOS 10.15+



It will still work with other distros of Linux if you skip installing system

packages (more details are below).



**You can download and run the install script with this 1 liner:**



```sh

bash <(curl -sS https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nickjj/dotfiles/master/install)

```



*If you're not comfortable blindly running a script on the internet, that's no

problem. You can view the [install

script](https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/install) to see exactly

what it does. Each section is commented. Sudo is only used to install system

packages. Alternatively you can look around this repo and reference the config

files directly without using any script.*



You can also run the script without installing system packages:



```sh

bash <(curl -sS https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nickjj/dotfiles/master/install) --skip-system-packages

```



That above could be useful if you're using a non-Debian based distro of Linux,

in which case you'll need to install the [dependent system

packages](https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/install) on your own

beforehand. Besides that, everything else is supported since it's only dealing

with files in your home directory.



My set up targets zsh 5.0+, tmux 3.0+ and Vim 8.1+. As long as you can meet

those requirements you're good to go.



### Did you install everything successfully?



Nice!



If you haven't done so already please close your terminal and open a new

one, then follow the step(s) below:



#### 1. Configure your git name and email



One of the things the install script did was copy a git ignored git config file

into your home directory. You're meant to put in your name and email address so

that your details are used when you make git commits.



```sh

vim ~/.gitconfig.user

```



#### 2. (Optional) confirm that a few things work



```sh

# Check to make sure git is configured with your name and email.

git config --list



# Sanity check to see if you can run some of the tools we installed.

vim --version

tmux -V

node --version

```



Before you start customizing certain config files, take a look at the

[personalization question in the FAQ](#how-to-personalize-these-dotfiles).



### Extra WSL 1 and WSL 2 steps



In addition to the Linux side of things, there's a few config files that I have

in various directories of this dotfiles repo. These have long Windows paths.



It would be expected that you copy those over to your system while replacing

"Nick" with your Windows user name if you want to use those things, such as my

Microsoft Terminal `settings.json` file and others. Some of the paths may

also contain unique IDs too, so adjust them as needed on your end.



Some of these configs expect that you have certain programs or tools installed

on Windows. The [tools I use blog

post](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-tools-i-use) has a complete list of

those tools so you can pick the ones you want to install.



Pay very close attention to the `c/Users/Nick/.wslconfig` file because it has

values in there that you will very likely want to change before using it.

[This commit

message](https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/commit/d0f1fc2622204b809cf7fcbb1a82d45b451064c4)

goes into the details.



Also, you should reboot to activate your `/etc/wsl.conf` file (the install

script created this). That will be necessary if you want to access your mounted

drives at `/c` or `/d` instead of `/mnt/c` or `/mnt/d`.



## FAQ



### How to personalize these dotfiles?



Chances are you'll want to personalize some of these files, such as various Vim

settings. Since this is a git repo you can always do a `git pull` to get the

most up to date copy of these dotfiles, but then you may find yourself

clobbering over your own personal changes.



Since we're using git here, we have a few reasonable options.



For example, from within this dotfiles git repo you can run `git checkout -b

personalized` and now you are free to make whatever changes that you want on

your custom branch.  When it comes time to pull down future updates you can run

a `git pull origin master` and then `git rebase master` to integrate any

updates into your branch.



Another option is to fork this repo and use that, then periodically pull and

merge updates. It's really up to you.



### How to add custom themes to the set-theme script?



Prefer a video? [Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h509rn2xIyU&t=191s)

that demonstrates performing the steps below.



After installing these dotfiles you'll have a `~/.local/bin/set-theme` script.

It's a [zero dependency Python 3

script](https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles/blob/master/.local/bin/set-theme).



1. Open the above file

2. Check out the `THEMES` dictionary near the top of the file

3. Copy one of the existing themes' dictionary items, such as `gruvbox` or `one`

4. Rename the dictionary's key to whatever your new theme's colorscheme name is in Vim

5. Adjust all of the colors and additional values in your new dictionary item as you see fit

6. Run `set-theme cooltheme`, replacing `cooltheme` with whatever name you used in step 4



Your terminal and tmux colors will update automatically, but if you have Vim

already open you'll need to manually run this command from within Vim to reload

your config `:so $MYVIMRC`.



If you added a theme with good contrast ratios please open a pull request to

get it added to the script.



### How to use a different terminal in the set-theme script?



I'm using the Microsoft Terminal but if you're using something else then your

terminal's colors won't get updated by this script because the script looks for

strings that are in MS terminal's config, but it's not painful to change.



*By the way, if you're using the Microsoft Terminal Preview edition you'll

still need to do step 1 below because the path of your MS terminal config file

will be different than the non-preview edition.*



You'll want to adjust the `set-theme` script by doing this:



1. Change the `TERMINAL_CONFIG` variable to reference your terminal config's path

2. Change the `terminal` attributes in the `THEMES` dictionary to use your terminal's config option names

3. Change the regex in the `change_terminal_theme` function based on your terminal's config option formatting rules

4. Optionally install Gruvbox, One or any other themes (the MS Terminal config in this repo includes them)



### How to fix Vim taking a long time to open when inside of WSL?



It primarily comes down to either VcXsrv not running or a firewall tool

blocking access to VcXsrv and it takes a bit of time for the connection to time

out.



You can verify this by starting Vim with `vim -X` instead of `vim`. This

will prevent Vim from connecting to an X server. This also means clipboard

sharing to your system clipboard won't work, but it's good for a test.



Vim will try to connect to that X server by default because `DISPLAY` is

exported in the `.zshrc` file. Installing and configuring VcXsrv as per these

dotfiles will fix that issue.



If it still persists, it might be a software firewall issue. You can open TCP

port 6000 and also restrict access to it from only WSL 2. This will depend on

which tool you're using to configure that but that should do the trick.



## About the Author



I'm a self taught developer and have been freelancing for the last ~20 years.

You can read about everything I've learned along the way on my site at

[https://nickjanetakis.com](https://nickjanetakis.com/). There's hundreds of

[blog posts](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/) and a couple of [video

courses](https://nickjanetakis.com/courses/) on web development and deployment

topics. I also have a [podcast](https://runninginproduction.com) where I talk

to folks about running web apps in production.