conrad / dotfiles

dotfiles

These are the configs and dotfiles I've wanted to port around onto different machines.

• Follow these directions to set up autocompletion with git: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v1/Git-Basics-Tips-and-Tricks#Auto-Completion

Setting up bash prompt

• You need to install lolcat in some form and then choose which one you're using in the .bash_prompt file. lolcat-c is the fastest. Currently, it's set just to use lolcat, which is easy to install with gem install lolcat.

Note on .bashrc & .bash_profile

• The usual convention is that .bash_profile will be executed at login shells, i.e. interactive shells where you login with your user name and password at the beginning. When you ssh into a remote host, it will ask you for user name and password (or some other authentication) to log in, so it is a login shell.

• When you open a terminal application, it does not ask for login. You will just get a command prompt. In other versions of Unix or Linux, this will not run the .bash_profile but a different file .bashrc. The underlying idea is that the .bash_profile should be run only once when you login, and the .bashrc for every new interactive shell.

• However, Terminal.app on macOS, does not follow this convention. When Terminal.app opens a new window, it will run .bash_profile. Not, as users familiar with other Unix systems would expect, .bashrc.

***sIf you want to have an approach that is more resilient to other terminal applications and might work (at least partly) across Unix/Linux platforms, put your configuration code in .bashrc and source .bashrc from .bash_profile with the following code in .bash_profile: ***

  if [ -r ~/.bashrc ]; then
    source ~/.bashrc
  fi

Or the shorter equivalent: [ -r ~/.bashrc ] && . ~/.bashrc

Permissions

• Since either file can drastically change your environment, you want to restrict access to just you:
  • $ chmod 700 ~/.bash_profile
  • $ chmod 700 ~/.bashrc