dotfiles/README.md

dotfiles

Here’s my dotfiles, inspired by people like Mathias. See his dotfiles at https://github.com/mathias/dotfiles.

The idea I’m currently going down is to create a symlink from $HOME to this directory. There is one exception to this, the .gitconfig file. I don’t want actual commiter details committed into this repo, and they differ per machine anyway — this Mac signs with my work address, the iMac with my personal one.

So identity and signing live in an untracked $HOME/.gitconfig.local, which the tracked gitconfig pulls in with an [include] as its last directive. Last matters: git applies config in file order, so anything after the include would override it.

$HOME/.gitconfig is copied rather than symlinked, so that an ad-hoc git config --global writes into $HOME instead of dirtying this repo. The trade-off is that git pull alone does not update it — re-run ./bootstrap.sh, or cp gitconfig ~/.gitconfig, after changing the tracked copy.

Usage

First clone the repo.

Run ./bootstrap.sh, this will create all the necessary symlinks, then source .zshrc.

Warning

This is a destructive process, so backup your dotfiles first.

As mentioned above, git identity lives in an untracked $HOME/.gitconfig.local. bootstrap.sh seeds it from gitconfig.local.template if it does not already exist, and never overwrites an existing one. Fill it in:

[user]
    name = Jonny Barnes
    email = jonny@jonnybarnes.uk
    signingkey = ssh-ed25519 AAAA...

[commit]
    gpgsign = true

[gpg "ssh"]
    program = /Applications/1Password.app/Contents/MacOS/op-ssh-sign

Do not skip this. Git will not prompt you — with no identity it quietly derives one from your username and hostname, warns once, and signs nothing.

$HOME/.extra is a separate untracked file for other machine-local environment variables, sourced from .zshrc. Keep git out of it:

Important

Never put git config --global in .extra. It is re-sourced on every SIGUSR1, so with several tmux panes the concurrent writes race on ~/.gitconfig.lock and spew error: could not lock config file. Put git settings in .gitconfig.local instead.

Light and dark mode

Most of this is now handled natively and needs no configuration:

• ghostty follows the system appearance itself via theme = light:tangere-light.conf,dark:tangere-dark.conf.
• tmux 3.6+ learns the terminal’s theme over OSC 2031 and exposes it as #{client_theme}.
• bat picks a theme per invocation from BAT_THEME_LIGHT / BAT_THEME_DARK.
• delta and nvim detect the terminal background themselves.

The tmux status bar needs help, because its colours are set explicitly. They live in tmux-light.conf and tmux-dark.conf — the same layout, with each colour taken from the matching tangere palette index — and tmux sources one of them from three hooks:

• client-light-theme / client-dark-theme react to a change,
• client-attached picks the right one for a client that attaches mid-way, since the two above only fire on a change.

Because this keys off the terminal's reported theme rather than a schedule, it behaves identically whether the change came from Auto at sunrise/sunset or from toggling Light/Dark by hand — nothing in the chain knows why it changed.

Note

A running nvim will not follow a live change: the docs are explicit that the TUI sets background on startup if it can detect it. New instances are fine — verified, a fresh nvim in light mode reports background=light — but existing ones need :set background=light or a restart.

Verified in light mode: the status bar switches in the same second the hook fires, a fresh nvim detects light, and delta resolves its light default (syntax-theme = GitHub, against Monokai Extended on dark).

Tip

When adding these hooks to an already running tmux server, detach and reattach. tmux enables the terminal’s theme-reporting mode when a client attaches, so a client that predates the hooks never gets asked to report changes — #{client_theme} still reads correctly, because that is answered by a direct query, but no hook fires until the client reattaches.

Note

This previously used dark-mode-notify as a launchd agent that ran pkill -usr1 zsh on every appearance change. That has been removed. It could never have worked: re-sourcing .zshrc runs inside each shell, but the status bar belongs to the tmux server and colours to a running nvim, so it could not retheme either. The one variable it set was read by nothing. Meanwhile it fired on every unlock, re-running .zshrc in every pane. Don’t bring it back.