Dotfiles: Starting over after eight years

A couple of months ago I decided it was time for a digital deep clean of my laptop. It was close to three years since last time, and over that period a lot of unnecessary software and data has aggregated in the nooks and corners of the system. The easiest way to achieve a clean system is to reinstall the operating system, which also gave me a chance to upgrade Ubuntu from 22.04 to 24.04.

When setting up a new system, one of the first things you want to do is to install and configure your most used programs. As many other programmers and Linux users, I have a dotfiles folder that contain my precious configuration files for all the vital utilities I use.

For me, the most important ones are bash, vim and tmux.

Time for a clean slate

It's now eight years since I entered a computer terminal¹ for the first time, and over that period a lot of things have accumulated in my dotfiles. I have been using different Linux distros, macOS, and Windows Subsystem for Linux, and have made my configuration adaptable to several different setups.

At the same time, I like to think of myself as a minimalist, in some sense. I like to keep my system as fast and uncluttered as possible. I'm not sure if my dotfiles reflect this, but I know I'm quite restrictive compared to some "vim maximalists".

My .vimrc has grown to ~500 lines, which is excluding the vimscripts, plugins and templates I use. I have a .bashrc of ~400 lines, and a .tmux.conf of ~60 lines.

In addition to that, I have 65 bash scripts, counting ~5500 lines in total. These are not really configuration files, but I include them in my dotfiles as a part of my bash setup.

My dotfiles are by no means bloated compared to other software I use regularly, but I wondered: How much of this I actually need?

With a newly installed operating system, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to start from scratch, and only add back things I actually felt the need for.

Now, after about 7 weeks since the clean install, I think it's time to assess the status. What parts of my dotfiles did actually make it on to the next phase?

Bash

In bash, I added back some lines quite quickly, mainly history settings and aliases. I use many shortcuts all the time, and they are firmly etched into my muscle memory:

# Use vi keybindings on command line
set -o vi

# Prompt appearance
export PS1="\[\e[31m\]\u\[\e[m\]@\[\e[32m\]\h\[\e[m\] \[\e[34m\]\w\[\e[m\] \\$ "

# Adjust history size
HISTSIZE=20000
HISTFILESIZE=20000
SAVEHIST=20000
# Ignore duplicate entries in the history
HISTCONTROL=ignoredups:erasedups
# The following lines are needed to save history from multiple sessions
# append history entries..
shopt -s histappend
# After each command, save and reload history
PROMPT_COMMAND="history -a; history -c; history -r; $PROMPT_COMMAND"


# Aliases

alias x='exit'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias ....='cd ../../..'
alias .....='cd ../../../..'
alias ......='cd ../../../../..'
alias v='vim .'
alias ll='ls -AhlF --color=auto'  # human-readable file size
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF --color=auto'
alias duh='du -h -d 1'                    # Show file human-readable file sizes
alias df='df -h'                          # Show disk usage with human-readable sizes
alias cp="cp -i"                          # confirm before overwriting something
alias grepr="grep -rn . -e"

alias g='git status'
alias ga='git add'
alias gc='git commit'
alias gcm='git commit -m'
alias gd='git diff'
alias gp='git push'
alias gpl='git pull'
alias gl='git log --graph --oneline' # show git log as graph
alias gcred='git config credential.helper store'
alias gitmail='git config user.email'
alias gitname='git config user.name'
alias gclone='git clone'
alias gall="find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -exec sh -c '(echo {} && \
    cd {} && git status -s && echo)' \;" # check git status of all subfolders
# git pull on all subfolders:
alias gplall="find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d -exec sh -c '(echo {} && \
    cd {} && git pull && echo)' \;"

The configuration file itself was reduced down to about 25% of its previous size, but the biggest difference is for the bash scripts: Out of 65, none have made their over to my freshly installed system.

All the time I spent writing scripts to automate certain actions seems to have gone to waste (although I probably learned a lot in the process). I guess I miscalculated how much I would actually use those scripts in my daily work.

Tmux

For tmux, I needed about half of my original configuration:

# Remap prefix to Control + a
set -g prefix C-a
# Bind 'C-a C-a' to type 'C-a', making sure 'C-a' works in other tools
bind C-a send-prefix
# Remove original prefix binding
unbind C-b

# Set vi mode
setw -g mode-keys vi

# Move to different windows using vim keybindings (hjkl) instead of arrow keys
bind-key h select-pane -L
bind-key j select-pane -D
bind-key k select-pane -U
bind-key l select-pane -R

# Name windows after directory
set -g window-status-format '#I:#(pwd="#{pane_current_path}"; echo ${pwd####*/} | cut -c1-20)#F'
set -g window-status-current-format '#I:#(pwd="#{pane_current_path}"; echo ${pwd####*/} | cut -c1-20)#F'

# Open new windows and panes in same directory as active
bind c new-window -c "#{pane_current_path}"
bind '"' split-window -c "#{pane_current_path}"
bind % split-window -h -c "#{pane_current_path}"

I didn't think my tmux-configuration was that important, but when you work mostly in the terminal, it's important to be able to navigate with ease.

Vim

My setup has reduced drastically for vim. Going from ~500 lines, 7 vimscripts, and 3 plugins, I'm now down to 9 lines and a single script:

set expandtab       " Use spaces instead of tabs
set tabstop=4       " Number of spaces a tab counts for
set shiftwidth=4    " Number of spaces to use for each level of indentation
set softtabstop=4   " Number of spaces that a tab counts for while editing
set autoindent      " Keep the same indentation as the current line
set smartindent     " Automatically add extra indent in certain contexts (like after `{` in C-like languages)
set number          " Show line numbers
filetype indent plugin on   " determine file type and use auto-indenting
source ~/.vim/vimscripts/commentary.vim " Comment/uncomment with gc[motion]. Credit: Tim Pope <http://tpo.pe/>

I currently don't feel the need to add any plugins to vim. Previously I used fzf² quite a lot, both in bash and vim. It is an awesome tool, and it felt like I supercharged my efficiency in the terminal when I started using it.

Now, I realize that the gains were not as large as I thought, and that can do my work efficiently without fuzzy search. I can easily navigate and find what I need without relying on a complex integration of fzf, bash, vim, find, bat, grep, and ripgrep, which is what I had before (and spent a long time on setting up). Maybe one day I'll be back there, but not until I feel the need for it.

Conclusion

All in all, I love how these tools are designed to be easily configured, adapted, and integrated with eachother. It's how all software should be designed: Giving people power over the tools they use.

But I also think it's important to step back once in a while and think about how we use the tools, and what tools we actually need.

It is a good reminder to observe that what I once thought of as a large improvement, actually did not bring as much benefit as I thought. Maybe that applies to other things in life as well.