dotfiles

Opinionated terminal setup for DevSecOps engineers. Built for M1/M4 Macs (ARM-native), with Intel fallback. Managed via chezmoi — one command bootstraps any new machine.

Philosophy

IDEs are fine. Terminals are faster once the muscle memory lands.

This setup is terminal-first, not terminal-only. Goals:

Zero friction switching between machines
Every tool earns its place — no bloat
Config is readable: comments explain why, not just what
Works on a caged corporate Mac and a clean personal one equally well No GUI apps. No App Store dependencies. Homebrew + chezmoi handles everything.

What's Inside

Category	Tools
Shell	zsh, oh-my-zsh, starship
CLI replacements	eza, bat, ripgrep, fd, fzf, zoxide
Data + automation	jq, yq, direnv
Multiplexer	tmux
Editor	neovim (LazyVim)
DevSecOps	k9s, kubectx, stern, trivy, mitmproxy
Runtimes	pyenv, fnm
Dotfile manager	chezmoi
AI/ML (optional)	torch, transformers, langchain, duckdb, jupyter

Tool Decisions

Why eza over exa? exa was abandoned in 2023. eza is the maintained community fork — drop-in replacement, same flags, same aliases.

Why starship over powerlevel10k? p10k requires a configuration wizard and a specific font stack. Starship is a single binary with a toml config. Works with any Nerd Font. Faster to replicate across machines.

Why fnm over nvm? nvm is shell-script-based and slows shell startup. fnm is a Rust binary, ARM-native on M-series Macs, with the same .nvmrc compatibility.

Why chezmoi over a bare git repo? A bare git repo tracking $HOME gets messy fast. chezmoi gives you templates (machine-specific paths), encrypted secrets, and a dry-run diff before applying. Essential when Homebrew prefix differs between ARM (/opt/homebrew) and Intel (/usr/local).

Why LazyVim over hand-rolled init.lua? Writing LSP configs from scratch is a weekend project. LazyVim gives you a working IDE-grade setup in an hour and you can override anything. The goal here is vim muscle memory, not vim config mastery.

Why tmux? SSH sessions die. tmux doesn't. Also: split panes mean you stop alt-tabbing between terminal windows.

Why jupytext for notebooks? Jupyter .ipynb files are JSON blobs — noisy diffs, impossible to review in GitHub. jupytext converts notebooks to plain .py files that git handles cleanly.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

xcode-select --install

Then install Homebrew.

Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4):

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
echo >> ~/.zprofile
echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"' >> ~/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"

Intel:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
echo >> ~/.zprofile
echo 'eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"' >> ~/.zprofile
eval "$(/usr/local/bin/brew shellenv zsh)"

Oh My Zsh

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Zsh plugins

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
 
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting
 
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-history-substring-search

Apply dotfiles

brew install chezmoi
chezmoi init --apply ruwgxo
chezmoi apply ~/.zshrc
source ~/.zshrc

Install all tools

bash ~/.local/share/chezmoi/bootstrap.sh

Takes 5–10 minutes. Safe to re-run.

AI/ML tools (optional)

Only needed for ML model work, LLM development, or Jupyter notebooks:

bash ~/.local/share/chezmoi/bootstrap.sh --ml

Set up runtimes

pyenv install 3.12.0 && pyenv global 3.12.0
fnm install --lts && fnm default lts-latest

Launch Neovim

nvim

LazyVim installs plugins on first launch (~2 min). Let it finish.

Manual Steps

Ghostty terminal

brew install --cask ghostty

Config already placed by chezmoi at ~/.config/ghostty/config.

Nerd Font

brew install --cask font-jetbrains-mono-nerd-font

Set as font in terminal preferences.

fzf keybindings

$(brew --prefix)/opt/fzf/install

Say yes to all. Enables CTRL+R (history) and CTRL+T (file search).

Intel Mac Notes

Homebrew prefix on Intel is /usr/local, not /opt/homebrew. chezmoi templates handle this automatically — no manual edits needed when switching between machines.

Repo Structure

dotfiles/
├── README.md
├── bootstrap.sh                    # core install — bash bootstrap.sh
├── requirements-ml.txt             # AI/ML Python packages — bash bootstrap.sh --ml
├── dot_zshrc                       # zsh config (chezmoi renames to .zshrc)
├── dot_zprofile.tmpl               # PATH and brew shellenv (ARM/Intel template)
└── dot_config/
    ├── starship.toml               # prompt config
    ├── ghostty/config              # terminal emulator config
    ├── nvim/init.lua               # LazyVim with Python, YAML, Markdown
    ├── tmux/tmux.conf              # tmux with vim-style pane navigation
    └── zsh/
        ├── smart-cd.zsh            # auto git pull, venv, pyenv, node, kube, .env safety
        └── secret-helpers.zsh      # macOS Keychain secret management

MIT License. Feedback and forks welcome.

Author: Raghav Dinesh | github.com/ruwgxo | ruwgxo.com

ruwgxo/dotfiles

README