In 2021, I was exploring MIT's Missing Semester: a great series of lectures on different computer tools. I recommend this to anyone who wants to have a basic level of understanding about terminal and the modern tech stack.

It has a lecture on setting up your own Dotfiles. Dotfiles are a way to configure software that you generally use and this personalization would help you be faster and more productive with your workflow. Here are notes on how to set up my dotfiles:

Commands to set up Dotfiles

git clone https://github.com/fallinginenigma/dotfiles.git --recursive

cd dotfiles && ./install

Merge Git to GitHub

git add .

git commit -m 'add some message'

git push origin main

Errors I ran into:

  • Adding submodules in .gitmodules
    • Adding Vim plugins
    • Adding zsh plugins
  • Mis-spelling Solarized as Solarised with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’
  • Configuring the YAML file
    • Adding appropriate whitespace characters
    • Adding force: true to force symbolic link
    • Adding the command [git submodule update --init --recursive, Installing/updating submodules]
    • Running the same command in ‘~/dotfiles’ to see if there is something wrong

Sources