Sensible dotfiles

This is a selection of most common tweaks that make working with terminal more enjoyable and productive. Some command line defaults are over a decade old - leave them behind and make your life easier!

• If you haven't done much customization before, this will be a good starting point. (It's also a good opportunity to start versioning your dotfiles.)

• If you are pair programming or otherwise sharing a machine, you can install this rather than confuse other people with your personal configuration.

• You can install this on all your VMs etc. to have some basic amenities without making too many changes.

I will keep this repository small and focused, including only settings that are essential for comfortable work environment. If you think that something doesn't make a reasonable default and should be removed (or that I missed an important setting), please [open an issue] (https://github.com/janek-warchol/.sensible-dotfiles/issues).

Installation

Clone the repo and run the installation script (it will backup your existing config files):

git clone https://github.com/janek-warchol/.sensible-dotfiles
cd .sensible-dotfiles/
./link-dotfiles.sh

You'll probably want to move some parts of your old configuration into the new files. Keep in mind that you need to re-run the installation script if you add new files to the repo, to create missing symlinks.

Features

Here's a summary of the most interesting settings:

• git-aware prompt displaying repository status (see screenshot) - very convenient!

• essential git configuration:

  • aliases for displaying awesome logs (see screenshot),
  • a dozen of common shorthands, including ci, co, br and st,
  • improved output layout and coloring for status, grep, blame and log,
  • better default behaviour in case of merge conflicts, file renames etc.

• reasonable defaults and convenient aliases for [ls, less and grep] (.bashrc#L8):

  • let ls group directories together, listing them above files,
  • better searching and navigation inside less,
  • did you know that grep can highlight matches even when piped to less?

• handy bash settings, for example:

  • case-insensitive autocompletion,
  • more powerful shell history and navigation,
  • cd to a directory just by typing its name, autocorrect typos

• disable SSH timeouts - don't let the connection hang because of inactivity

• Tim Pope's sensible.vim - reasonable and widely accepted default configuration for Vim

• turtles all the way down: a global Vagrantfile that lets Vagrant install sensible-dotfiles on your VMs as well!

Other good stuff

Want more? There are some additional programs worth installing:

• ranger: a console file manager. It's much better than typing cd and ls all the time.
• trash-cli: command-line interface to system trash. Have you ever rm'ed wrong file and wanted to get it back?
• remap Caps Lock to control and then use xcape to make it emit escape when pressed on its own. This one is a real killer :-)

Both are available from apt repositories: sudo apt-get install ranger trash-cli.

If you're interested in my personal configuration (forked from this repo), look here.