dotfiles

Introduction

This repository serves as my way to maintain and setup my Mac. It is deeply inspired by Dries Vints' dotfiles who also offers great learning material on this topic. Check out his blog post or watch the screencast on Laracasts.

Everything needed to install my preferred setup of macOS is detailed in this readme.

Fresh macOS setup

Follow the instructions below to set up a new Mac.

Backup your data

If you're migrating from an existing Mac, you should first make sure to backup all of your existing data. Go through the checklist below to make sure you didn't forget anything before you migrate.

• Did you commit and push any changes/branches to your git repositories?
• Did you remember to save all important documents from non-iCloud directories?
• Did you save all of your work from apps which aren't synced through iCloud?
• Did you remember to export important data from your local database?
• Did you update mackup to the latest version and ran mackup backup?

Setting up your Mac

After backing up your old Mac you may now follow these install instructions to setup a new one:

1. Update macOS to the latest version through system preferences

2. Generate a new public and private SSH key by running:

   curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maxwoerner/dotfiles/main/ssh.sh | sh -s "<your-email-address>"

3. Clone this repo to ~/.dotfiles with:

   git clone git@github.com:maxwoerner/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

4. Make the installation script executable with:

   chmod +x ~/.dotfiles/fresh.sh ~/.dotfiles/clone.sh

   And run the installation with:

   cd ~/.dotfiles && ./fresh.sh

5. After mackup is synced with your cloud storage, restore preferences by running mackup restore

6. Restart your computer to finalize the process

7. (If required) launch any application to finalize the specific setup process (e.g. login)

Your Mac is now ready to use!

Maintain existing macOS setup

• To adjust you MacOS settings simply edit the .macos file and run the following command:

  source ~/.dotfiles/.macos

• To install additional software simply add the specific entry in your Brewfile and update the Homebrew recipes:

  brew update

  Afterwards, run install all dependencies with bundle:

  brew bundle --file ~/.dotfiles/Brewfile

Notes

• MacOS settings are specified in the .macos file. You can find much more settings at the original script by Mathias Bynens and Kevin Suttle's macOS Defaults project.
• Check out the Brewfile file and adjust the apps you want to install for your machine. Use their search page to check if the app you want to install is available.
• Custom aliases can be added via the aliases.zsh file. If you need to tweak your $PATH check out the path.zsh file. These files get loaded in because the $ZSH_CUSTOM setting points to the .dotfiles directory.