dotfiles

macOS setup for my terminal and dev tools. Bare repo at ~/dots, work tree $HOME. No Homebrew: official installers or prebuilt binaries only. When a tool is installed, add it here.

1. Basics

xcode-select --install
git config --global user.name "<name>"
git config --global user.email "<email>"
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "<email>"

Add the public key to GitHub, and to ~/.ssh/config:

Host github.com
  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

2. GitHub CLI

Prebuilt gh from github.com/cli/cli releases (macOS arm64 zip), copied to ~/.local/bin/gh. Then gh auth login (choose SSH).

3. Dotfiles

git clone --bare git@github.com:dbuddha/dotfiles.git $HOME/dots
alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/dots/ --work-tree=$HOME'
config checkout
config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
exec zsh

If checkout reports conflicts, move those files aside and run it again. ~/.gitignore ignores everything except an allowlist: add a !path line to track a new file.

4. Secrets

Keep tokens in an untracked ~/.secrets (export NAME=value lines); .zprofile sources it first. Never put a token in .zshrc or .zprofile: both are tracked and this repo is public.

5. tmux (built from source)

curl -L https://github.com/libevent/libevent/releases/download/release-2.1.12-stable/libevent-2.1.12-stable.tar.gz -o /tmp/libevent.tar.gz
tar xzf /tmp/libevent.tar.gz -C /tmp && cd /tmp/libevent-2.1.12-stable
./configure --prefix=/usr/local --disable-shared && make && sudo make install

Then download the latest tmux release tarball from github.com/tmux/tmux, ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local && make && make install. Check tmux -V.

6. Editor, terminal, font, theme

• vim: macOS ships 9.1 at /usr/bin/vim.
• Alacritty: .dmg from github.com/alacritty/alacritty releases.
• Font: cp ~/.config/fonts/JetBrainsMonoNLNerdFont-Regular.ttf ~/Library/Fonts/ (family "JetBrainsMonoNL Nerd Font").
• Theme: ~/.config/theme/generate.sh writes the glitchberry files for Alacritty, vim and tmux.

7. Languages

• Rust: curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y (.zprofile sources ~/.cargo/env after path_helper).
• Node: nvm (curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/master/install.sh | bash), then nvm install --lts and npm install -g pnpm.
• bun: curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash.
• uv: curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh, then uv python install 3.12 and uv tool install modal.

8. Cloud and infra CLIs

• gcloud: Google's installer into ~/.local/share/google-cloud-sdk. .zshrc sources its path and completion files and sets CLOUDSDK_PYTHON to uv's Python 3.12 (macOS Python is too old).
• kubectl, helm, tilt, tectonic: prebuilt binaries in ~/.local/bin.
• tsh (Teleport): official macOS package, installs /usr/local/bin/tsh.
• OrbStack: official app (Docker); docker and orb live in ~/.orbstack/bin.
• Postgres.app: official app; .zprofile adds its bin to PATH.

9. Agent tools

• Claude Code: official installer (~/.local/bin/claude). In ~/.claude/settings.json: attribution with empty commit and pr, pluginConfigs."agents-md@builtin".options.instructionFiles = "claude-md-and-agents-md", autoMemoryEnabled: false.
• Codex: ships with the ChatGPT app. In ~/.codex/config.toml: project_root_markers = [".agents-root"] and project_doc_fallback_filenames = ["CLAUDE.md"]; put an empty .agents-root at the top of the workspace (~/dev).
• Cursor CLI (agent): official installer (~/.local/bin/agent). Commit and PR attribution off in ~/.cursor/cli-config.json.

10. Check

gh --version; config status; tmux -V; vim --version | head -1
cargo -V; node --version; pnpm --version; bun --version; uv --version
gcloud --version | head -1; kubectl version --client; tsh version; docker version