Nixfiles & Dotfiles

Contains all my Nixfiles & Dotfiles.

Assumes Darwin / MacOS, and a working installation of Nix and nix-darwin. That should probably be it.

Is This Really Everything?

Pretty much - there's no brew installed, so all packages come from either Nix, or installed through a programming language's toolchain (go, cargo etc...). Some exceptions are documented in the darwin-configuration.nix package list.

Additionally, one detail is SauceCodePro Nerd Font. Although it's possible to install fonts with Nix, this font is missing and can be found here.

And no "Internet Accounts", as MacOS calls them. You'll need to setup your own accounts ;-)

When setting up your new machine, you'll need to symlink the nix-channels file into your home directory:

ln -s $(realpath ./nix-channels) ~/.nix-channels

That should hopefully be it, but I'll update this once I need to setup a new laptop...

How does it look like?

(pictures where taken before the switch to Alacritty).

What makes it different?

Completely CLI-based

...except a few, probably weird to many, exceptions. These Dotfiles setup vim, tmux and alacritty to be your primary driver. No VS Code, no terminal windows and tabs, no visual Git interface, no whatever else there might be.

However, the exceptions are:

• Safari: I'm happy with Safari, at least after two plugins: AdBlock and Vimari. My primary use for it is the "link mode", which adds a keybinding to all links on a page.
• Mail: I'm just using the default mail apps. I either don't get as many mails as others, or just don't need to answer them as much :)
• Calendar: Also here, default MacOS calendar app. Works for me.
• Slack: ...I know there are CLI-based interfaces for it, but the app has nice keybindings as well so it's good enough.

Heavy use of Git Worktrees

I'm making heavy use of a git feature called "Worktrees". These allow you to have multiple branches "open" at once, by using different directories. You can do things like squash changes in one branch - one directory, and cd into the other branch-directory and squash pop again.

I find it very useful when writing code as well, where it's super easy to have a quick glance at the file's state in a different commit / branch / tag.

My helpers are completely built on that, I never checkout a branch in the same directory anymore.

• w: stands for "work", and has three arguments, which triggers three layers:

  • the repository-name as on Github - without the owner. The command will switch into the directory of that git repository. And if it shouldn't exist, it dynamically checks out the repository into the required directory and setting it up with the right worktree setup. The command autocompletion lists all existing (remotely, if the repository is not cloned yet!) / checked-out repositories. All other arguments are optional, which means that if omitted, it will simply switch into the main or master branch. And yes, it will automatically detect which one it needs to be. That logic is also available under the default_branch function!
  • the branch or tag name. Remote-branches are automatically tracked / checked out if one exists with the same name. A new git worktree will be created, and the command will then cd into the created worktree directory. The autocompletion suggests local, already checked out branches by default, but when the first character of that branch is a t, it will suggest all tags, and if the first character is an o, it will list all origin branches. Don't worry, the already checked out branches will be shown first! If there's no third argument, it will simply check out the current commit if it's a new branch, or just at the existing branch's. Will then change into the directory of that branch.
  • the commit to check out. The third argument is a commit hash (or, I guess, a branch name would also work, but that's already covered by the 2nd layer), and yes, it has autocompletion. This means if you press "tab", a function will be called that allows you to visually and with fuzzy-search enabled, select a specific commit to check out. This commit-selection is also available under the name git-pick-commit or as a git alias git pick-commit.

Additionally, as these layers are...layers, the second layer is simply a second command, c for checkout. I haven't yet needed the git-pick-commit function often enough to create a short name for it though.

Last but not least, about that, the shell prompt is also optimised for this.

The general "structure" of my worktrees is the .git folder in the "root", and then a directory per branch in that root. The prompt will not show a branch name if it's on main or master. Additionally, the directory name (which is similar to the branch name) is omitted, so you don't even notice that you're in a subdirectory:

Modern

These Dotfiles make heavy use of "modern" replacements for traditional Unix / Linux tools like "cat", "grep", "sed", "ls" and "find": "bat", "ripgrep", "sd", "lsd" and "fd".

The invocation cat is even directly aliased to bat, but can be made copy-paste friendly by using "copycat": ccat. This will omit the line numbers and styling at the left, which is usually annoying otherwise.

Additionally, ls has been mapped to lsd as well.

TODO's

This still configures vim, not neovim: I so far haven't had the patience to translate my config.

Additionally,there's a shared clipboard for tmux and vim. And tmux and the system clipboard. But not for vim and system clipboard, yet :(. This would be a nice fix.