dotfiles

Setup

./setup.sh

Detects the current OS, installs packages, symlinks configs, and runs OS-specific configuration scripts.

---

How it works

OS detection

scripts/get-os.sh identifies the current OS and returns a key such as linux-arch, macos, or windows. This key is used throughout to select the right configs and scripts.

Config symlinking

scripts/configure.sh iterates over configs/<os>/ and creates a symlink in $HOME for each tracked file or directory. Only files tracked by git are linked — untracked files are skipped. If something already exists at the target path, it is backed up with a timestamp suffix before being replaced.

Install and configure scripts

scripts/<os>/install.sh installs packages for that OS.

After installation, scripts/configure.sh runs every configure-*.sh script found in scripts/<os>/. These handle OS-specific setup that can't be expressed as a config file (registry entries, service enablement, symlinks outside $HOME, etc.).

On Windows, there is additional ceremony involved. The shell is zsh running inside MSYS2, which provides a Unix-like layer over Win32. Several things need to be massaged into place to make it behave consistently:

• ~/.config is symlinked to AppData/Roaming since Windows doesn't follow XDG conventions, so config files land where apps expect them.
• Symlinks require MSYS=winsymlinks:nativestrict to produce real Windows native symlinks rather than MSYS copies or junctions.
• Some setup can't go through dotfiles at all and is applied directly: registry imports via reg.exe, persistent env vars via setx, and autostart/Start Menu shortcuts copied into the appropriate Windows directories.

---

Structure

configs/
  <os>/           # files here get symlinked to $HOME
    .zshrc
    .bashrc
    .config/
      ...

scripts/
  get-os.sh               # OS detection
  configure.sh            # symlinks configs/, runs configure-* scripts
  <os>/
    install.sh            # package installation
    configure-*.sh        # post-install configuration

Adding a new config

Drop the file or directory into configs/<os>/ and git add it. The next run of setup.sh (or scripts/configure.sh directly) will symlink it.

Platform-shared configs

Files shared across platforms live under the most complete platform (currently linux-arch) and are symlinked or referenced from other platforms where needed.