Configuration files

Various dotfiles I use and want to have available elsewhere. Probably a lot of this is Ubuntu-only so handle with care if you re-use aliases etc. :-)

• .bash* settings for bash (prompt, aliases, functions)
• .inputrc settings for keyboard input (like case insensitive completion)
• .vimrc settings for vim (not vi; mappings, functions etc.)
• .screenrc settings for screen (not tmux yet)
• .ackrc settings for ack (or ack-grep how it's called in Debian repositories)
• .git* default settings and ignores for git
• .profile commands to execute after login (basic system information)
• .pam_environment user environment locale settings with one assignment expression per line (I prefer english/utf-8 messages with german numbers and dates etc.)

Usage

Clone the repository to a folder of your choice and copy wanted or all files:

git clone git://github.com/graste/dotfiles-etc.git
cd dotfiles-etc && ./copy-files.sh [all]

Without installed git you can try to use curl or wget:

curl -#L https://github.com/graste/dotfiles-etc/tarball/master | tar -xzv --strip-components 1

Screenshot

Screenshot with a glimpse of vim status line, screen status line and the bash prompt with exit code coloring and git status information:

Bash prompt

• # <time> <history-id> <exit-code> (<git-branch> <git-branch-tracking>|<git-local-status>) <path> $
  • # mitigates execution of accidental pastes in the command line
  • <time> as often long running commands are not called with the time bash builtin
  • <history-id> to execute earlier commands via !<history-id> when seeing one in the scrollback buffer
  • <exit-code> shell exit code of last command (color in bold red if it's not zero)
  • (<git-branch> <git-branch-tracking>|<git-local-status>) displays detailed useful information about the git repository in the current working directory (not displayed if not in a git directory)
    • <git-branch> name of the currently checked out branch
    • <git-branch-tracking> number of commits ahead/behind of remote
    • <git-local-status> number of staged/modified/conflicted/untracked files
  • <path> current working directory shortened via PROMPT_DIRTRIM=3 environment variable and colored according to user permissions
    • in green: user owns directory
    • in yellow: user is allowed to write in directory
    • in red: user is not allowed to write in directory

Bash

• RTFM: Bash Reference Manual
• echo $-: list shell options - if it contains an i the shell is interactive (that is: no script but user input)
• normal bash startup order is (first wins): /etc/profile, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login and ~/.profile
• typically ~/.bash_profile executes ~/.bashrc (not vice versa)
• ~/.bash_profile is executed for login shells while ~/.bashrc is executed for interactive non-login shells
• to really execute ~/.bash_profile start bash with a -l or --login option
• put bash unspecific things in ~/.profile as switching shells becomes easier
• bash specific settings should be set in ~/.bashrc (as it may not be your login shell)

word modifiers

• p print
• h head - remove a trailing file name component, leaving only the head
• t tail - remove all leading file name components, leaving the tail
• r remove a trailing suffix of the form .xxx, leaving the basename
• e remove all but the trailing suffix
• s substitue strings (replace first match)
• gs global substitute (replace all matches)
• & repeat the previous substitution
• word modifiers are stackable
• words are whitespace delimited

history handling

• !! repeat last command from history
• !foo repeat last command beginning with foo
• !foo:p print last command beginning with foo - it adds to the history as well, thus you cann use !! directly if the command looks good
• !N execute the command with number N
• !-N execute the command N commands ago
• !$ reuse the 'end' of the last command (reuse the last word)
• !$:p print last argument from previous command (:p is a word modifier)
• !* reuse all arguments from previous command
• ^error^correction correct and execute previous command (replace and execute)
• given the command cat /usr/local/share/doc/foo/bar.baz:
  • cd !$:h change to directory (:h removes bar.baz)
  • cat !-2$:t open bar.baz as that is the tail of the 2nd last command
  • mkdir !-3$:t:r create directory bar (:t removes tailing path and :r removes the .baz extension)
• !!:s/foo/bar/ execute last command with the first foo occurrence replaced by bar
• !!:gs/foo/bar/ execute last command with all occurrences of foo replaced by bar
• !!:s/foo/&.bar/ - execute the last command with the first foo replaced by .bar

shortcuts

• <alt+.> to insert last argument on current cursor position (repeatable)
• <ctrl+w> erase word
• <ctrl+u> erase from cursor to beginning of the line
• <ctrl+a> move the cursor to the beginning of the line
• <ctrl+e> move the curor to the end of the line

brace expansion

• cp filename{,-old} copy filename to filename-old
• cp filename{-v1,-v2} copy filename-v1 to filename-v2
• touch foo{1,2,3}bar create files foo1bar, foo2bar and foo3bar
• multiple brace expansions can be used together and nested (not that that would be readable)

various stuff

• |& === 2>&1 |: standard error of command1 is connected to command2's standard input through the pipe
• set command
  • set -o: list currently configured shell options
  • set -o variable_name: set option
  • set +o variable_name: unset option
  • set +e ; command_that_might_fail_but_we_want_to_ignore_it ; set -e === command_that_might_fail_but_we_want_to_ignore_it || true
• shopt command
  • shopt -p: list of some of the currently configured variables that control optional behaviour
  • shopt -s option_name: enable/set option
  • shopt -u option_name: disable/unset option
• echo $SHLVL: get subshell level (toplevel is 1)
• default time format: TIMEFORMAT=$'\nreal\t%3lR\nuser\t%3lU\nsys\t%3lS'

tl;dr

• ~/.profile for whole session settings like programs to run on log in and the start of the display manager. May be used for environment variable definitions.
• ~/.bashrc for bash specific settings like alias and function definitions, shell options and prompt settings.
• ~/.inputrc for key bindings and other input related settings.
• ~/.bash_profile can be used instead of ~/.profile, but you also need to include ~/.bashrc if the shell is interactive.

See e.g. Unix shell initialization for a short introduction on different shells and their startup files.

Locale settings

The ~/.pam_environment file contains session-wide user-environment locale settings with one assignment expression per line. To activate changes to this file one has to re-login.

• LANG basic language setting used by applications on the system (may be overridden by more specific locale environment variables)
• LC_CTYPE character set used to display and input text
• LC_NUMERIC how non-monetary numeric values are formatted on screen
• LC_TIME how date and time values are formatted
• LC_COLLATE how to sort various information items (e.g. sort command behaviour)
• LC_MONETARY how monetary numeric values are formatted
• LC_MESSAGES language to display messages to the end user
• LC_PAPER definitions of paper formats and standards
• LC_NAME how names are formatted
• LC_ADDRESS how to display address information
• LC_TELEPHONE how telephone numbers are structured
• LC_MEASUREMENT what units of measurement are used
• LC_IDENTIFICATION metadata about the locale information
• LC_ALL override over all the other locale environment variables (applications use this variable if it's set, regardless of other variables' values)

Vim bundles

pathogen is used to handle plugins, syntax highlighting etc. For details see .vim/bundle.

For syntax checking with syntastic the following (ubuntu) packages may be useful:

• sudo apt-get install pylint tidy libxml2-utils make puppet-lint
• for jshint, jslint and csslint, less, sassand js-yaml:
  • sudo apt-get install software-properties-common python-software-properties python g++ make python-pygments
  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
  • sudo apt-get update
  • sudo apt-get install nodejs
  • install globally sudo npm install -g less sass jshint jslint js-yaml csslint (or locally: npm install less sass jshint jslint js-yaml csslint and add it to $PATH or as an alias)
  • things like coffeelint if you use those...
• for twig-lint:
  • download http://asm89.github.com/d/twig-lint.phar and put it into your $PATH (e.g. ~/bin)
  • cd ~/bin && chmod u+x twig-lint.phar && mv twig-lint.phar twig-lint
• for vim-php-namespace to work, exuberant-ctags is necessary.
  • sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags

Ctags

Generate ctags completion files in your project's root folder like this:

ctags -nR --PHP-kinds=+cf --exclude='.git' --exclude='*.phar' --exclude="*.min.js" --regex-php='/^[ \t]*trait[ \t]+([a-z0_9_]+)/\1/t,traits/i' -f tags .

There's a bash function called create-ctags that may be called in project directories to create a tags file (see .bash/functions.sh).

Sources of inspiration

• The customized git status information prompt was adapted from: https://github.com/magicmonty/bash-git-prompt
• various dotfiles of other people (e.g. bash functions calc, json, gz, unidecode, escape from @mathiasbynens)
• bin/git-open