vimkim's dotfiles

A reminder of how to set up my dotfiles on a new machine.

Step 1: Install Homebrew

Prerequisite on Ubuntu (e.g. a fresh Docker container) — the Homebrew installer needs curl and git:

sudo apt install curl git

Follow the instructions at https://brew.sh/:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

After installing, if you want to use brew one time only (without polluting your rc files), load it into the current shell (Linux):

eval "$(/home/linuxbrew/.linuxbrew/bin/brew shellenv bash)"

On macOS, use eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv bash)" instead.

Alternative: Nix Package Manager

sh <(curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -L https://nixos.org/nix/install)

or,

sh <(curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -L https://nixos.org/nix/install) --no-daemon

personal choice, especially inside a container

. $HOME/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/nix.sh

Note: nix-command and flakes are automatically enabled with chezmoi apply.

Step 2: Install zsh, chezmoi, and nushell, then apply dotfiles

brew install zsh chezmoi nushell

Note: the package is nushell, not nu.

Alternative: zsh via system package manager

Arch

sudo pacman -S zsh

RHEL (Fedora, Rocky, CentOS)

sudo dnf install zsh

Ubuntu

sudo apt install zsh

Alternative: chezmoi via Nix

nix --extra-experimental-features nix-command --extra-experimental-features flakes profile install nixpkgs#chezmoi

Then apply:

# github handle after --apply
chezmoi init --apply vimkim

Updating on an existing machine

chezmoi init --apply only clones when the source directory does not exist yet; it does not pull remote updates. To sync a patch made on another machine, either pull-and-apply in one step:

chezmoi update

or, when the machine might have local edits worth checking first:

chezmoi git pull -- --autostash --rebase   # just pull the source repo
chezmoi diff                               # see what apply would change
chezmoi apply                              # apply when happy

Prerequisites for config.nu

None of these are hard requirements — config.nu quietly skips every tool that is not installed. Recommended for the interactive experience (prompt, history, completions; without carapace, Tab-completion for external commands does not work):

brew install starship atuin carapace

Optional tools

Optional tools used by aliases and helper commands (e.g. eza for l, fzf/fd/ripgrep for the pickers, lazygit for lz, delta as the git/lazygit pager):

brew install eza fzf fd ripgrep lazygit delta

Misc dependencies:

brew install mise direnv zoxide fastfetch diffnav gh

The terminal configuration uses Maple Mono. On Fedora, follow Installing Maple Mono Nerd Font.

Daily AI-toolchain upkeep

daily-update (in ~/.config/my-scripts/bin) upgrades Codex, Claude Code, and the globally installed agent skills in one go:

daily-update            # run everything, report stale skills, mark today done
daily-update --status   # show current versions and whether today is done
daily-update --stale    # list stale skills, changing nothing
daily-update --prune    # delete the stale skills that --stale listed
daily-update --reset    # clear today's mark so the reminder comes back

Both config.nu and .zshrc call daily-update --remind at the end of interactive startup. That prints a pending block on every new shell and keeps printing until daily-update actually runs; the run writes today's date to ~/.cache/daily-update.stamp, which silences the reminder for the rest of the calendar day. Seeing the reminder never dismisses it, which is the difference from the PR digest above.

The stamp records that a run happened, not that every step succeeded. A failed step is listed at the end of the run and left for a deliberate re-run, so a network blip cannot trap the reminder in a loop.

Skills come from the skills CLI and are tracked in ~/.agents/.skill-lock.json. Because ~/.claude/skills/* symlinks into ~/.agents/skills, the single skills update --global covers both Claude Code and Codex.

Pruning stale skills

skills update never removes anything, and the CLI has no prune command, so a skill deleted from its source repository stays installed and active forever. Each run therefore reports what has gone stale and points at --prune. The startup reminder then names those skills, reading them from cache so it stays offline and fast; past eight names it summarises the remainder as a count.

A skill is stale only if the lock file claims it and one of these holds:

• it no longer exists in its source repository,
• its directory under ~/.agents/skills is gone, or
• its ~/.claude/skills symlink is broken.

Everything else is left alone. This matters because the lock file records only GitHub-sourced installs: the whole my-cubrid-skills collection is installed from a local path and never appears in it, so treating the lock as an allowlist would delete every personal skill. Names present in ~/gh/my-cubrid-skills are additionally protected even if a source repo later publishes the same name.

Two failure modes are guarded explicitly. A gh failure is never read as "the repository is empty", and because gh api prints its 404 body to stdout, the upstream list is accepted only when the command succeeds and every line looks like a bare directory name. --prune moves what it removes into ~/.cache/daily-update/trash/<timestamp>/, with a copy of the lock file, rather than deleting outright.

Upgrades always resolve ~/.local/bin first rather than trusting the calling shell's PATH, because the two disagree on this host: zsh finds a mise-managed npm codex and a stale root-owned /usr/bin/claude (npm global, 2.0.25) that the nushell login shell never sees. Without the pin, running daily-update from zsh would upgrade a different install than the one you actually use.

WezTerm on Fedora KDE through Herdr

The display-environment, XKB layout, and dead_hamza packaging diagnosis is recorded in WezTerm on Fedora KDE through Herdr, including verification and rollback commands.

Optional: Install the Colemak programmer layout

The KDE Wayland configuration includes a standalone Colemak layout with programming symbols on the unshifted number row. Follow Installing the Colemak Programmer Layout to validate and apply it without shadowing the system US XKB symbols file.

Optional Step: Install oh-my-zsh

I now use nushell instead, by the way.

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
mv .zshrc.pre-oh-my-zsh .zshrc

Optional Step: Other nix packages

Only if you installed Nix. This might take some time and disk spaces.

my-nix-install.sh

Step 3: Install nvim dotfiles

cd $HOME/.config
git clone https://github.com/vimkim/nvim

Step 4: X11 Forwarding

sudo dnf install xauth
sudo apt install xauth
sudo pacman -S xorg-xauth

# /etc/ssh/sshd_config
X11Forwarding yes
X11DisplayOffset 10
X11UseLocalhost yes