dotfiles

Managed with dotbot. Targets Debian/Ubuntu and Arch, with a PowerShell port of the tool installer for Windows (see Windows).

Bootstrap on a fresh machine

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y git   # or: sudo pacman -S git
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/AndreasVu/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
bash bootstrap.sh
exec zsh

bootstrap.sh runs install-required.sh (packages, shell, runtimes), then ./install (dotbot symlinks), then setup-git-identity.sh (prompts for your git name and email). The order matters because zshrc sources Oh My Zsh; if a step aborts, the following ones do not run.

Run it as your normal user, never with sudo — everything installs into $HOME and the script calls sudo itself where it needs to. It refuses to start as root.

Flag	Effect
(none)	Install tools, then link dotfiles
--tools-only	Run install-required.sh only
--link-only	Run ./install only
--skip-git	Skip the git identity prompt
--no-gui	Skip GUI apps (Ghostty, Zen Browser, Zed, Discord)
--gui	Install GUI apps even on WSL
-h, --help	Usage

The two halves can still be run directly (bash install-required.sh, ./install) if you prefer.

Re-running

Everything is safe to re-run. install-required.sh detects what is already present and prints [SKIP]; on Debian it does not even hit apt-get update when nothing is missing.

Two deliberate exceptions:

• Oh My Zsh is always removed and reinstalled clean. Anything you put in ~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/ is destroyed on every run — keep it in this repo instead. This step needs network, and a failed download leaves you with no ~/.oh-my-zsh until you re-run.
• The script ensures tools are present, not current. It will not upgrade an already-installed lazygit, Zed, .NET, Node or zoxide.

What gets installed

Step	Tools
Prerequisites	curl, git, tar, sed, fzf, unzip, gzip, wget, jq, gnupg, ca-certificates, ripgrep, fd
Build	build-essential / base-devel (gcc + make)
Treesitter	tree-sitter CLI (latest GitHub release binary, into ~/.local/bin)
Editors	Neovim 0.12+, clipboard bridge (xclip + wl-clipboard, or win32yank on WSL)
Shell	zsh, Oh My Zsh, zsh-autosuggestions, zsh-syntax-highlighting, zsh-completions, chsh to zsh
Terminal	Ghostty (GUI)
Git	lazygit
Browser	Zen Browser (GUI)
Editor	Zed (GUI)
Runtimes	.NET SDK 10.0, Rust (rustup), Node (nvm, latest LTS)
Neovim config	clone of AndreasVu/nvim into ~/.config/nvim
Fonts	JetBrainsMono Nerd Font, Noto Color Emoji (GUI)
Navigation	zoxide
Chat	Discord (GUI)
.NET tools	lazydotnet

What gets linked

Target	Source
~/.zshrc, ~/.zshenv, ~/.profile, ~/.bash_logout	zshrc, zshenv, profile, bash_logout
~/.gitconfig, ~/.gitignore_global	gitconfig, gitignore_global
~/.ideavimrc	ideavimrc
~/.config/ghostty/*	ghostty/*
~/.config/zed/*	zed/*

Links use force: true, so dotbot replaces the regular ~/.profile and ~/.bash_logout that Debian ships in /etc/skel.

Git identity

File	Applies to
~/.gitconfig-identity	everything by default
~/.gitconfig-work	repos under ~/work/, via includeIf

bootstrap.sh prompts for both and writes them. To change them later:

bash setup-git-identity.sh --force

Re-running without --force leaves existing files alone, and the script skips itself entirely when stdin is not a terminal, so unattended runs do not hang.

user.useConfigOnly = true is set deliberately: if those files are missing, git refuses to commit rather than silently inventing an address from your username and hostname. The error tells you to run the script.

Notes

• Neither install script writes to the dotfiles-managed ~/.zshrc. rustup runs with --no-modify-path and nvm with PROFILE=/dev/null so their installers do not append snippets into the symlinked file.
• .NET installed via dotnet-install.sh lands in ~/.dotnet, which is not on PATH by default. zshrc sets DOTNET_ROOT and adds it.

WSL

WSL is detected from /proc/version and $WSL_DISTRO_NAME, and GUI applications are skipped there automatically — Ghostty, Zen Browser, Zed and Discord all want a desktop you probably run on the Windows side instead. Everything else installs normally.

--no-gui forces the same behaviour anywhere (headless servers, containers), and --gui overrides the detection if you do run a desktop under WSLg.

Clipboard differs too: on WSL the script installs win32yank to ~/.local/bin so Neovim's + register reaches the Windows clipboard, instead of xclip/wl-clipboard. That works with or without WSLg.

The dotfiles themselves are linked either way. The Ghostty and Zed configs are harmless on a machine without those apps, and stay in place for when you sync the same repo to a desktop.

Windows

bootstrap.sh and friends are bash, so Windows gets its own PowerShell port of the same steps. It needs PowerShell 7+ and winget.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/AndreasVu/dotfiles.git $HOME\src\dotfiles
cd $HOME\src\dotfiles
pwsh -File .\bootstrap.ps1

Script	Counterpart
bootstrap.ps1	bootstrap.sh
install-required.ps1	install-required.sh
setup-git-identity.ps1	setup-git-identity.sh

Same flags, PowerShell-style: -ToolsOnly, -SkipGit, -NoGui, -Gui, -Help, plus -DryRun, which walks every step without installing. Use it — the Visual Studio Build Tools step is a multi-GB download you do not want to trigger by accident. Re-running is safe and prints [SKIP] exactly like the bash version.

Everything installs through winget rather than apt/pacman. Two steps are simpler than on Debian: winget carries a current Neovim, so there is no release-tarball fallback, and Zed installs from its own package instead of a piped shell script. tree-sitter is still a GitHub release download, into ~\.local\bin.

There is no link step. install.conf.yaml links zshrc, zshenv, profile, bash_logout and the Ghostty config, none of which have a Windows target, and Windows symlinks need Developer Mode or elevation. To pick up the shared git config:

git config --global include.path "$HOME\src\dotfiles\gitconfig"

Note that gitconfig sets core.autocrlf = input, which is deliberate but not the Windows default of true.

Applications with no Windows build

These are reported as [UNSUPPORTED] during the run and again in a summary at the end, rather than being silently skipped.

Application	Why	Installed instead
Ghostty	macOS and Linux only; a Windows GUI is on the roadmap but unreleased, and the ports on GitHub are unaffiliated	nothing — use Windows Terminal, WezTerm, or Ghostty inside WSL
zsh	no native Windows build (WSL, MSYS2 or Cygwin only)	PowerShell 7
Oh My Zsh	a zsh framework	oh-my-posh
zsh-autosuggestions	zsh plugin	PSReadLine -PredictionSource HistoryAndPlugin
zsh-syntax-highlighting	zsh plugin	PSReadLine syntax colouring (built in)
zsh-completions	zsh plugin	PSReadLine menu completion
chsh	Windows has no login shell to change	set PowerShell 7 as the Windows Terminal default profile
nvm (nvm-sh)	a POSIX shell script	fnm — per-user, no elevation to switch versions, and it keeps --lts

Reported as [NO-OP] because Windows already provides them: ca-certificates (OS cert store), unzip/gzip (Expand-Archive and the bundled tar.exe), sed, the fdfind→fd shim (a Debian packaging quirk), Noto Color Emoji (Segoe UI Emoji ships with Windows), and the clipboard bridge — Neovim on Windows talks to the Win32 clipboard directly, so xclip, wl-clipboard and win32yank are all unnecessary.

Shell config

install-required.ps1 installs oh-my-posh and ensures PSReadLine 2.2+, but does not write $PROFILE — the same rule the Linux scripts follow with the dotbot-managed .zshrc. It prints the snippet to paste in when it finishes.

Shell startup

.zshrc deliberately does not source nvm.sh. Doing so costs ~250-450ms on every single shell, which was around 85% of total startup time. Instead:

• .zshenv resolves the default Node version by following nvm's alias chain (default -> lts/* -> lts/<name> -> v22.x) with a few builtin file reads and puts that version's bin on PATH. Falls back to the newest installed version, and does nothing at all when nvm is absent.
• .zshrc defines nvm as a stub function that sources nvm.sh on first call and then replaces itself. nvm use, nvm install and friends work as normal; you just pay for them only when you use them.

.profile carries a POSIX version of the same resolver, because desktop sessions read .profile but never .zshenv — without it, anything launched from a GUI (Zed, a desktop nvim) has no node, and Copilot and several Mason servers fail silently.

Neovim

~/.config/nvim is not managed by dotbot. install-required.sh clones AndreasVu/nvim there as an independent repo, so commit and push nvim changes from that directory as normal. Re-runs leave an existing checkout untouched; a non-git ~/.config/nvim is moved aside to ~/.config/nvim.bak.<timestamp> rather than deleted.

That config uses vim.pack, which requires Neovim 0.12+. Debian and Ubuntu ship much older builds, so on Debian the script installs the official release tarball to ~/.local/share/nvim-release and symlinks ~/.local/bin/nvim; Arch uses pacman. The version is checked either way, and you get a warning rather than a silent too-old Neovim.

Plugins install on the first nvim launch. Most come from GitHub; leap.nvim is fetched from codeberg.org, so that host needs to be reachable too.

JetBrainsMono Nerd Font is installed alongside the GUI apps and set as Ghostty's font-family. The nvim config ships with vim.g.have_nerd_font = false; flip it to true in that repo to get the icons.

• ghostty/auto/theme.ghostty is included optionally via config-file = ?auto/theme.ghostty. It is symlinked into this repo, so anything writing it will show up as a git change.