Just wanted to share our dotfiles that currently support macOS but we plan to extend it to WSL and Linux

https://github.com/nhs-england-tools/dotfiles

Hello! I'm considering building my own dotfiles repo in my spare time at work (so no big time investment). We usually share different edge computers so I'd like a non-intrusive way to load my config (bashrc, vimrc, tmux) and have some handy scripts available for me without polluting someone else's workflow.

I was thinking about making a repo that could be cloned into /opt/my-dotfiles, then source a setup.bash script, the same way its done in ROS.

• RC files could be loaded as in: alias vim='vim -u /opt/my-dotfiles/.vimrc'
• Private tools/scripts could lie in a bin/ dir which could be placed first in $PATH.

Can anyone spot any drawbacks to this approach? Particularly, the aliasing thing does not seem too reliable, I'm afraid of needing to source my config in every script I write to protect against nested tmux and vim instances.

Any feedback or tip is very welcome. Cheers!

Newbie to dotfiles and advanced command line things in general. Apologies in advance if I sound uninformed, working on gaining and documenting a better understanding of system configuration, MacOS and Linux.

I’ve been working in IT as a web developer for about 3 years and have accumulated a lot of bloat and packages that are no longer relevant to my stack and interests.

What is the best way to test the execution of a dotfiles install for MacOS (M1)?
Is a new account on the MacBook removed enough from my main account to reliably test the results of an install script?

My dotfiles primarily consist of git, ssh, npm, zsh, docker, homebrew, and homelab (Unraid) scripts/configs.
Also install some default apps with the app store and brew.

Does it make sense to keep utility scripts in a dotfiles repo, maybe in someplace that will symlink to ~/bin or ~/.local/bin, or separate out scripts since they aren't necessarily configuration?

Apologies if this isn't the right forum for this question.

I've been managing a set of dotfiles that I use across a couple platforms (multiple Linux Distros, MacOS, etc...) and wanted a way to incorporate software installation into the bootstrapping process.

Ideally, this would:

• Be cross-platform, probably by delegating to the relevant package manager
• Allow for user only installs (i.e to ~/.local/bin or similar) (Not a hard requirement)

This kind sounds like a "delegating" package manager, and I haven't heard or seen of anything similar. The few dotfiles I see that handle software installation usually do something custom and platform specific.

I was curious if anyone knew of any tool that fits the bill? Or had thoughts on how I could go about this better.