dotfiles

Carefully Curated Dotfiles for Popular Linux Programs

This repository contains the configuration files (i.e., "dotfiles") used to configure the programs regularly used by me, Gregory M. Kapfhammer. While heavily customized for my personal workflow and computers, these dotfiles serve as practical examples of how to configure a wide variety of development tools and system utilities. The configurations span terminal multiplexers, window managers, text editors, email clients, and desktop environments, providing a foundation for building your own efficient development setup on Linux and MacOS.

This is a summary of some of the dotfiles and program configurations that I created and actively maintain:

• .Rprofile: initialization for the R programming language
• .Xresources: configuration for the Rofi for displaying menus
• .bibtoolrsc: configuration for the bibtool program's BibTeX management
• .ctags: extensions for exuberant-ctags to handle new languages
• .compton.conf: configuration for the compton compositor used with i3
• .gitconfig: configuration file for Git, including customized aliases
• .gitignore_global: configuration of the files to exclude from Git repositories
• .gvimrc: legacy configuration of gvim text editor
• .indentconfig.yaml: pointer to configurations for the latexindent program
• .chopsentences.yaml: configuration for the latexindent program to do semantic linefeeds
• .inputrc: configuration of all input-enabled tools with vi-like mappings
• .latexmkrc: configuration for the latexmk wrapper for LaTeX compilers
• .mailcap: configuration for how MIME-enabled programs load files
• .minivimrc: minimal configuration of vim and nvim for testing purposes
• .msmtprc: legacy configuration for the msmtp SMTP client
• .muttprintrc: configuration of the muttprint program for printing emails
• .muttrc: configuration of the mutt mail user agent
• .oh-my-zsh.sh: customized script to load the oh-my-zsh framework
• .zprofile: script to run when first starting the shell environment
• .signature: footer displayed by mutt in all email messages
• .tmux.conf: configuration of the tmux terminal multiplexing tool
• .urlview: configuration for the urlview program used with mutt and tmux
• .vimrc: configuration for the nvim and vim text editors
• .xinitrc: configuration for to set environment variables and to start i3
• .zshrc: configuration for the zsh shell to use oh-my-zsh
• .config/bat/themes: theme configuration to ensure that bat looks like nvim
• .config/alacritty: configuration and color scheme for the alacritty terminal window
• .config/dunst: configuration and scripts for the dunst notification manager
• .config/gtkrc-2.0: configuration of GTK 2.0 to support legacy GTK programs on Arch Linux
• .config/gtkrc-3.0: configuration of GTK 3.0 to support GTK programs on Arch Linux
• .config/i3: configuration and scripts for the i3 window manager
• .config/polybar: configuration and scripts for the polybar used with i3
• .config/termite: configuration and color scheme for the termite terminal window
• .config/zathura: configuration for the zathura PDF viewer
• .local/bin: scripts for regular use through the terminal window and rofi

Are you looking for some neat configurations to improved your own dotfiles? If so, then I encourage you to review the .vimrc, .zshrc, and .tmux.conf files that I regularly improve. Interesting in learning how to configuration the i3 window manager? Then, you are invited to review the .config/i3 and .config/polybar directories. Please note that many of these files have groupings with beginning and ending marks that respectively look like {{{ and }}}, thereby helping to group the regions.

To ensure that my development environment is largely self-contained, this repository also includes Git submodules of the packages that I actively use in, for instance, the zsh shell. When I needed to heavily customize a specific plugin or tool I forked a specific GitHub repository and then made my improvements in that fork. Otherwise, I added the needed repository as a sub-module to this one. These are the current submodules that I maintain:

• fastsyntaxhighlighting
• fzftab
• gitstatus
• tpm
• zshautosuggestions
• zshdefer
• zshgitprompt
• zshsyntaxhighlighting

Installation Instructions

You can type the following command if you want to clone this repository:

git clone https://github.com/gkapfham/dotfiles.git

Now, you can type cd dotfiles and start to browse the configuration files that are available. I suggest that you make symbolic links from your home directory to this repository if you want to maintain and use these configuration files. For instance, if you use the bibtool program to manage your BibTeX files and if you were in your home directory and the dotfiles/ directory was in configure/, then you would type the following command to create the .bibtoolrsc as a symbolic link to the file in the ~/configure/dotfiles/ directory containing this repository.

ln -s ~/configure/dotfiles/.bibtoolrsc .bibtoolrsc

As an alternative to manually creating all the symbolic links in the aforementioned fashion, this repository has a Makefile with rules that use stow to create these symbolic links automatically. If a system already contains dotfiles that you no longer needed and you want to remove them from the system, then please type the command make purge. Next, typing the command make dotfiles will create all the needed directories and subdirectories and make symbolic links to the dotfiles in this repository from the correct destination directories. In summary, the main command to type is:

make dotfiles

Standalone Scripts

This repository includes standalone Lua scripts in nvim/lua/ that can be run from the command line using Neovim's built-in LuaJIT runtime. For example, the similar.lua module provides compression-based semantic file similarity search and can be invoked directly from a terminal:

nvim -l nvim/lua/similar.lua /path/to/repository "search query"

Pi Coding Agent (pi)

This repository includes configurations for the Pi Coding Agent (pi), an extensible terminal coding harness. Pi is run via bunx without a global installation:

bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent

Package Management

Pi extensions, skills, and themes are distributed as npm packages. Install and remove them using the pi CLI through bunx:

Command	Purpose
bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent install npm:<package>	Install a package
bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent remove npm:<package>	Remove a package
bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent list	List installed packages
bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent update --all	Update pi and all packages

For example, to install and then remove the pi-vim modal editing extension:

bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent install npm:pi-vim
bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent remove npm:pi-vim

Note: After installing or removing a package, restart Pi for the changes to take effect.

Web Search Configuration

The pi-web-access package provides web search, content extraction, and video understanding capabilities. The curator workflow (which opens a browser for summary review) can be disabled by creating ~/.pi/web-search.json:

{
  "workflow": "none"
}

See the pi-web-access README for full configuration options.

Remote Access (pi-web)

pi-web provides a web UI for browsing Pi sessions and chatting from any device on your network. It runs as a systemd service and is accessible over NetBird (or Tailscale, WireGuard, etc.).

bunx @earendil-works/pi-coding-agent install git:github.com/ygncode/pi-web

The service listens on 0.0.0.0:31415 with auth enabled. To access from a phone or another device over NetBird:

1. Find your NetBird IP: netbird status
2. Open http://<netbird-ip>:31415 in the remote browser
3. Enter the auth token (displayed during install, stored in ~/.config/pi-web/env)

If you need to retrieve the token again, start a temporary HTTP server:

kill $(lsof -ti :3333) 2>/dev/null
cd /tmp
echo "Token: $(grep PI_WEB_TOKEN ~/.config/pi-web/env | cut -d= -f2)" > index.html
nohup python3 -m http.server 3333 --bind 0.0.0.0 &>/tmp/token-server.log &
disown

Then open http://<netbird-ip>:3333 on your remote device to view the token. The same token can also be used with pi-web on port 31415.

Remote Access (Paseo)

Paseo is an Android/iOS app for controlling Pi (and other coding agents) from your phone. It runs as a daemon on your laptop and connects to the phone over NetBird (or Tailscale, etc.).

Start the daemon:

bunx @getpaseo/cli start --listen 0.0.0.0:6767 --hostnames "diameno.netbird.cloud,.netbird.cloud" --no-relay

Stop the daemon:

bunx @getpaseo/cli daemon stop

Check status:

bunx @getpaseo/cli status

The Paseo Android app connects to http://diameno.netbird.cloud:6767 over NetBird. Paseo discovers Pi through the pi command in PATH. On NixOS, the system pi binary is used automatically; there is no wrapper script.

Problems or Praise

If you have any problems with downloading or understanding these configuration files, then please create an issue associated with this Git repository using the Issues link at the top of this repository. As the sole contributor to the dotfiles repository, I will do everything possible to resolve your issue and ensure that all the configurations are clear and potentially best suited to working in your development environment. Remember, this repository is being made publicly available to provide examples of how to write configurations for programs like vim, nvim, i3, and polybar. If you find that these files help you in preparing your own configurations, then I also encourage you to "star" and "watch" this project!