Greg Hurrell

@wincent ·wincent.dev

Staff Engineer at @DataDog, Ex-@github, Ex-@facebook

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JavaScript 20%
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Lua 6%

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"dotfiles" and system configuration > These dotfiles are affectionately dedicated to the vi editor originally created by Bill Joy, with whom I have spent many pleasant evenings[^1] — Greg Hurrell,…

"dotfiles" and system configuration

![CI status badge](https://github.com/wincent/wincent/actions/workflows/ci.yml)

> These dotfiles are affectionately dedicated to the vi editor originally created by Bill Joy, with whom I have spent many pleasant evenings[^1]

— Greg Hurrell, paraphrasing Donald Knuth

Overview

!screenshot

Target platforms: macOS and Linux (see [Platform status](#platform-status) below).
Set-up method: ~~Beautiful and intricate snowflake~~ an incredibly over-engineered custom configuration framework called [Fig](./fig/README.md).
Visible in the screenshot:

- The "bright" color scheme (see screenshots of other colorschemes). - MonoLisa font. - Neovim, running inside tmux, inside kitty, on macOS "Tahoe".

Features

Dotfiles

A set of dotfiles that I've been tweaking and twiddling since the early 2000s (under version control since 2009). Characteristics include:

Sane Vim pasting via bracketed paste mode.
Write access to local clipboard from local and remote hosts, inside and outside of tmux (via Clipper).
Full mouse support (pane/split resizing, scrolling, text selection) in Vim and tmux.
Focus/lost events for Vim inside tmux.
Cursor shape toggles on entering Vim.
Italics in the terminal.
Bundles a (not-excessive) number of useful Vim plug-ins.
Conservative Vim configuration (very few overrides of core functionality; most changes are unobtrusive enhancements; some additional functionality exposed via ` and mappings.
Relatively restrained Zsh config, Bash-like but with a few Zsh perks, such as right-side prompt, auto-cd hooks, command elapsed time printing and such.
Unified color-handling (across Kitty, Neovim, etc) via tinted-theming/tinted-kitty, tinted-theming/tinted-shell, tinted-theming/tinted-tmux, tinted-theming/tinted-vim, and wincent/base16-nvim.
Encrypted versioning of files with sensitive content (via age).
Comprehensive Hammerspoon config.


Homebrew
On macOS, the "homebrew" aspect installs a bunch of useful software.
Keyboard customization
On macOS, we use Karabiner-Elements, and on Linux, we use Interception Tools and a few other pieces to make the following changes:
Make Caps Lock serve as Backspace (when tapped) and Left Control (when chorded with another key). When held down alone, Caps Lock fires repeated Backspace events.
Make Return serve as Return (when tapped) and Right Control (when chorded with another key). When held down alone, Return fires repeated Return events.
Toggle Caps Lock on by tapping both Shift keys simultaneously.
Makes the function keys on my external Realforce keyboard behave like the "media" keys on Apple's keyboards.
And these only on macOS:
Swap Option and Command keys on my external Realforce keyboard.
Make the "application" key (extra modifier key on right-hand side) behave as "fn" on Realforce keyboard.
Map Control-I to F6 (only in the terminal) so that it can be mapped independently from Tab in Vim[^linux].
Make "pause" (at far-right of function key row) behave as "power" (effectively, sleep) on Realforce keyboard.
Adds a "SpaceFN" layer that can be activated by holding down Space while hitting other keys; I use this to make the cursor keys available on or near the home row in any app[^cpu].
[^linux]: This isn't needed on Linux because we can achieve the same via a Kitty configuration.
[^cpu]: Note that holding the Space bar may increase the temperature of the CPU.
Zsh
Functions

ag: Transparently wraps the ag executable so as to provide a centralized place to set defaults for that command (seeing as it has no "rc" file).
bounce: bounce the macOS Dock icon if the terminal is not in the foreground.
color: change terminal and Vim color scheme.
fd: "find directory" using fast bfs and sk; automatically cds into the selected directory.
fh: "find [in] history"; selecting a history item inserts it into the command line but does not execute it.
history: overrides the (tiny) default history count.
jump (aliased to j): to jump to hashed directories.
regmv: bulk-rename files (eg. regmv '/\.tif$/.tiff/' *).
scratch: create a random temporary scratch directory and cd into it.
tick: moves an existing time warp (eg. tick +1h); see tw below for a description of time warp.
tmux: wrapper that reattches to pre-existing sessions, or creates new ones based on the current directory name; additionally, looks for a .tmux file to set up windows and panes (note that the first time a given .tmux file is encountered the wrapper asks the user whether to trust or skip it).
tw ("time warp"): overrides GIT_AUTHOR_DATE and GIT_COMMITTER_DATE (eg. tw -1d).


Prompt
Zsh is configured with the following prompt:
!Zsh prompt
Visible here are:
Concise left-hand prompt consisting of:
  - Last component of current directory (abbreviates

$HOME to ~

 if possible).
  - Prompt marker,

❯, the "HEAVY RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK ORNAMENT" (that's \u276f, or e2 9d af

 in UTF-8).
Extended right-hand size prompt which auto-hides when necessary to make room for long commands and contains:  - Duration of previous command in adaptive units (seconds, minutes, hours, days, depending on duration).
  - Current version control branch name.
  - Current version control worktree status using colors that match those used in

git status

:
    - Green dot indicates staged changes.
    - Red dot indicates unstaged changes.
    - Blue dot indicates untracked files.
  - Full version of current working directory (again, abbreviating

$HOME to ~

).
Nested shells are indicated with additional prompt characters. For example, one nested shell:
!Zsh prompt with one nested shell
Two nested shells:
!Zsh prompt with two nested shells
Root shells are indicated with a different color prompt character and the word "root":
!Zsh prompt with root shell
Nesting within a root shell is indicated like this:
!Zsh root prompt with one nested shell
Two nested shells:
!Zsh root prompt with two nested shells
If the last command exited with a non-zero status (usually indicative of an error), a yellow exclamation is shown:
!Zsh prompt showing command with non-zero exit status
If there are background processes, a yellow asterisk is shown:
!Zsh prompt showing background proceses
Dependencies
tmux 3.2 or later.
Neovim generally tracking the latest release and sometimes the nightly.
Relatively recent Zsh.
Relatively recent Git.
Clipper for transparent access to the local system clipboard.
Kitty.
Ruby.
MonoLisa font or any other fixed-width font that includes the Powerline glyphs.
Platform status
| Platform                               | Status                                                                                                                                                     |
| -------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| macOS                                  | :1st_place_medal: Currently the most tested platform, as well as the one with most aspects (because my daily driver is macOS 26 "Tahoe")                   |
| Debian/Ubuntu                          | :2nd_place_medal: Less tested, fewer aspects involved; I use this for running coding agents in VMs for isolation, so it's a somewhat artificial "flavor"   |
| Arch Linux                             | :3rd_place_medal: Not actively tested, fewer aspects involved; I was using Arch Linux on my "leisure" desktop machine, but installed Windows to play games |
| Red Hat Linux and related (eg. CentOS) | :skull: Abandoned, but in the past (2011-2018) this was the distro I used full-time at work                                                                |
Installation
Clone

Development occurs on the main branch, but to avoid inconvenience for people who previously cloned the repo when the master branch was the main line, the legacy branch _is_ kept up-to-date via [a pre-push hook](./support/hooks/pre-push) (which updates the local branch) and [a post-receive hook](./support/hooks/post-receive) (which updates the remote).


macOS
sh
git clone https://github.com/wincent/wincent.git

Note that locally, I'm actually using Jujutsu for version control, so I've "colocated" a jj repo on top of my Git clone with:


sh
jj git init --colocate
Arch Linux
sh
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S git tmux
git clone https://github.com/wincent/wincent.git

git: In order to clone the repo.
tmux: Just for comfort (eg. so you can see scrollback).


Install

> ⚠️ WARNING: There are _lots_ of different things that can be installed or configured (see [the aspects/ directory](./aspects)). Unless you want your machine to be exactly like mine — which is unlikely — you probably don't want to install _everything_. Maybe you don't even want everything in the ["dotfiles"](./aspects/dotfiles) and ["nvim"](./aspects/nvim) aspects. Please inspect the contents of each aspect before proceeding to install it; you may even be better off just looking at the configuration files and stealing the bits that you find interesting or useful (everything is [in the public domain, unless otherwise indicated](./LICENSES)).

At the time of writing, these are the aspects, which you can expect to change over time (see [the aspects/ directory](./aspects) for an up-to-date listing):

| Aspect | Description | macOS | Arch | Debian | | ---------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----- | ---- | ------ | | apt | Installs packages withapt-get`. | - | - | ✅ |
| aur | Installs packages from the Arch User Repository. | - | ✅ | - |
| automount | Sets up macOS's automount facility | ✅ | - | - |
| avahi | Manages the Avahi zeroconf ("Bonjour") networking daemon. | - | ✅ | - |
| backup | Backup scripts | ✅ | - | - |
| bitcoin | | - | ✅ | - |
| cron | Sets up cron files | ✅ | - | - |
| defaults | Sets up defaults (ie. preferences) on macOS | ✅ | - | - |
| dotfiles | Creates symlinks in \$HOME to the dotfiles in this repo | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| fonts | Installs font files | ✅ | - | - |
| homebrew | Installs and updates Homebrew | ✅ | - | - |
| interception | Sets up Interceptions Tools (keyboard customization). | - | ✅ | - |
| karabiner | Configures Karabiner-Elements (keyboard customization). | ✅ | - | - |
| launchd | Configures launchd | ✅ | - | - |
| locale | Sets up /etc/locale.conf | - | ✅ | ✅ |
| meta | Tests the configuration framework

…

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