dotfiles

sloria's dotfiles, rewritten as Ansible roles. Sets up my local and remote development environments with a single command.

As of 2025, this repo only supports macOS. There's still remnants of Red Hat and Debian support, but they are not maintained.

a few neat features

• zsh configured with prezto.
• nice fonts for the terminal and coding.
• python managed with uv
• vim with vim-plug for plugin management. All configuration in a single file .vimrc.
• pluggable. Everything is optional. Fork this. Remove what you don't use. Configure what you do use.
• CLIs and apps installed with homebrew. App Store-only apps installed with mas.
• Useful git aliases

prerequisites

• homebrew (If on macOS) - Install this first
• git: brew install git
• ansible >= 1.6: brew install ansible

install

• Fork this repo.
• Clone your fork.

# Replace git url with your fork
# NOTE: It is important that you clone to ~/dotfiles
git clone https://github.com/YOU/dotfiles.git ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles

• Update the following variables in group_vars/local (at a minimum)
  • git_name: Your name, which will be attached to commit messages, e.g. "Steven Loria"
  • git_email: Your git email address.
• Optional, but recommended: Update group_vars/local with the programs you want installed by homebrew, homebrew-cask, and npm.
  • mac_homebrew_packages: Utilities that don't get installed by the roles.
  • mac_cask_packages: Mac Apps you want installed with homebrew-cask.
• Edit provision.yml as you see fit. Remove any roles you don't use. Edit roles that you do use.
• Run the installation script.

./bin/dot-local

authenticating with github

You won't be able to push to repos until you authenticate with GitHub. You can use gh for this, which should have been installed by dot-bootstrap above.

gh auth login
gh auth setup-git

updating your local environment

Once you have the dotfiles installed you can run the following command to rerun the ansible playbook:

dot-local

You can optionally pass role names

dot-local git python

updating your dotfiles repo

To keep your fork up to date with the sloria fork:

git remote add sloria https://github.com/sloria/dotfiles.git
git pull sloria master

commands

There are three main commands in the bin directory for setting up and updating development environments:

• dot-local: sets up local environment
• dot-remote: sets up remote environment

special files

All configuration is done in ~/dotfiles. Each role may contain (in addition to the typical ansible directories and files) a number of special files

• role/*.zsh: Any files ending in .zsh get loaded into your environment.
• bin/: Anything in bin/ will get added to your $PATH and be made available everywhere.

notes

vscode

Use built-in Settings Sync to sync VSCode settings.

macOS keyboard settings

There are a few keyboard customizations that must be done manually:

• System Settings > Keyboard > Turn "Key repeat rate" and "Delay until repeat" to their highest settings.

• System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Modifier Keys > Change Caps Lock key to Control.

mac mini

I also use this repo to configure my Mac Mini server which I have running in headless mode. My setup is documented in docs/MAC_MINI.md.

what if I only want your vim?

First make sure you have a sane vim compiled. On macOS, the following will do:

brew install vim

The following commands will install vim-plug and download my .vimrc.

After backing up your ~/.vim directory and ~/.vimrc:

mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload
curl -fLo ~/.vim/autoload/plug.vim https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim
curl -fLo ~/.vimrc https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sloria/dotfiles/master/roles/vim/files/vimrc

You will now be able to open vim and run :PlugInstall to install all plugins.

troubleshooting

If you get an error about Xcode command-line tools, you may need to run

sudo xcode-select -s /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

license

MIT Licensed.