dotfiles

Terminal setup for Ubuntu: fish, starship, ghostty, herdr, btop and git.

Install

git clone <this-repo> ~/dev/projects/dotfiles
cd ~/dev/projects/dotfiles

./bootstrap.sh   # install the tools (apt + a few standalone installers)
./install.sh     # symlink the configs into place

install.sh moves anything already at a destination into ~/.dotfiles-backup/<timestamp>/ before linking, so nothing is lost.

./install.sh --dry-run    # show what would change
./install.sh fish git     # link only some packages

Reverting

If something's wrong, revert.sh undoes install.sh (removes the symlinks and restores what was there before, from the backup) and, unless told otherwise, also undoes the login shell change from bootstrap.sh.

./revert.sh              # revert everything, using the latest backup
./revert.sh --dry-run    # show what would change
./revert.sh --list       # list available backup snapshots
./revert.sh --backup 20260919-110016   # use a specific snapshot
./revert.sh --keep-shell # leave the login shell alone
./revert.sh fish git     # revert only some packages

It only touches a destination that is still exactly the symlink install.sh created — anything you've since edited or relinked by hand is left alone and reported, not overwritten. It does not uninstall anything bootstrap.sh installed (fish, eza, starship, ...), only the linking and the shell change.

What goes where

Package	Repo path	Linked to
fish	fish/config.fish	~/.config/fish/config.fish
fish	fish/conf.d/	~/.config/fish/conf.d/
starship	starship/starship.toml	~/.config/starship.toml
ghostty	ghostty/config	~/.config/ghostty/config
herdr	herdr/config.toml	~/.config/herdr/config.toml
btop	btop/btop.conf	~/.config/btop/btop.conf
git	git/gitconfig	~/.gitconfig
git	git/gitmessage.txt	~/.gitmessage.txt

Fish layout

Fish sources everything in conf.d/ before config.fish, so the split is:

• conf.d/path.fish — PATH entries (fish_add_path, idempotent)
• conf.d/env.fish — environment variables, fzf options
• conf.d/aliases.fish — aliases, each guarded by type -q
• config.fish — interactive setup: starship, zoxide, fzf, fnm

alias cd=z is the one alias that lives in config.fish rather than conf.d/aliases.fish. zoxide copies the existing cd into its own __zoxide_cd_internal when it initializes, so an alias defined before that init makes zoxide call the alias and recurse until the call stack blows up.

Machine specific settings

Anything that should not be committed (API keys, work-only config) goes in files that are gitignored and sourced automatically:

• ~/.config/fish/local.fish — sourced at the end of config.fish
• ~/.gitconfig.local — pulled in by [include] in ~/.gitconfig

# ~/.config/fish/local.fish
set -gx SOME_API_KEY "..."

Tools

Installed by bootstrap.sh: fish, git, curl, bat, eza, fzf, zoxide, ripgrep, btop, unzip, jq, starship, fnm, bun, JetBrainsMono Nerd Font.

Installed manually: ghostty, herdr, zed.

If herdr is already on PATH, bootstrap.sh also installs the herdr-automatic-rename plugin (live tab naming) and wires its fish hook. Since herdr itself is manual, install it first and re-run bootstrap.sh to pick this up.

Making fish the login shell

bootstrap.sh sets it automatically (as root, or via sudo/an interactive chsh prompt otherwise) and remembers the previous shell in ~/.dotfiles-backup/previous-shell so revert.sh can put it back. If you only ran install.sh, it just prints a reminder:

chsh -s "$(command -v fish)"