Decide how and whether we coordinate our config files

[RainierBarrett]

Right now, we have some files in the getting-started/config_files/ directory for coordinating vim colors, VMD hotkeys, and matplotlib style. These can be installed via a make command. Going forward, should we:

• Continue as-is?
• Move to an /etc/skel set up for lab machines?
• Remove some of the shared style files but keep others? If so, which ones?

Discuss!

[chrisjonesBSU]

One option is not to put entire .bash_profile , .vimrc, .vmdrc, etc.. files in the getting started repo and don't include instructions that are basically having the user overwrite whatever rc files they already have.

What we could do instead is have text files of things that could be added (appended) onto the user's existing files. For example, we have a vim-append.txt file that includes a few commonly used commands like set ts set number, etc. Then the instructions would be something like cat vim-append.txt >> ~/.vimrc

This way, nothing is being erased or overwritten on the user's computer.