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This tutorial will help you get started with using the dotbot-template to create a personal dotfiles repository backed by Dotbot.

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Making it Your Own
• Resources

Getting Started

1. Navigate to dotbot-template in your browser
2. Click on the Use this template button
   • This will take you to the Create a new repository screen
3. Name your repository dotfiles
4. Click on the Create repository from template button
5. Clone your new dotfiles repository locally
6. Remove the existing files from ./meta/profiles and ./meta/configs

Making it Your Own

Now it is time for the fun part. We will add our first dotfile configuration. This tutorial will use vim, zsh, and alacritty as our first dotfiles. A good practice from an organizational standpoint is to create a separate folder at the root of our dotfiles repository for each program we want to manage dotfiles.

1. At the root of your dotfiles repository, create the following folders
   • vim - terminal editor
   • zsh - bash alternative
   • alacritty - Hardware accelerated terminal emulator
2. Create a new file inside ./vim called vimrc
3. Create a new file inside ./zsh called zshrc
4. Create a new file inside ./alacritty called alacritty.yml with the following content:

   shell:
     program: /usr/bin/local/zsh
     args:
       - --login

5. Create a new file inside ./meta/configs called vim.yaml (must be .yaml, not .yml) with the following content:

   - link:
     $HOME/.vimrc: vim/vimrc

6. Create a new file inside ./meta/configs called zsh.yaml (must be .yaml, not .yml) with the following content:

   - link:
     $HOME/.zshrc: zsh/zshrc

7. Create a new file inside ./meta/configs called alacritty.yaml (must be .yaml, not .yml) with the following content:

   - link:
     $HOME/.config/alacritty: alacritty

8. From a terminal at the root of your dotfiles repository, run ./install-standalone vim zsh

If you want to use this configuration as part of a machine specific setup, follow these steps:

1. Create a new file in ./meta/profiles called default with the following content:

   vim
   zsh
   

   • If you want to run a config as a sudoer, add -sudo to the config (vim-sudo instead of vim)
   • You can add as many configs here as you like (config name without the .yaml)
2. From a terminal at the root of your dotfiles repository, run ./install-profile default

Your done! Don't forget to update your README.md, commit your changes, and push them up!

Resources

• Dotfiles Repository - ecarlson94/dotfiles
• Dotbot Directives