What does HackerNews think of dotfiles?

:wrench: .files, including ~/.macos — sensible hacker defaults for macOS

Language: Shell

#2 in Bash
#8 in macOS
macOS Ventura is now available | Oct 2022
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I added a PR to fix rsync, mosh, and some other tools, since they will be broken out of the box.

But it seems this project has fallen behind on PRs.

If you would like to have this fix, you can do this after cloning the repo:

  git clone https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles && cd dotfiles

  git fetch origin "+refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*" && git cherry-pick origin/pr/963
Show HN: We open sourced our new Mac developer setup script | Dec 2021
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Mathias Byens' dotfiles repo is a bit like this - https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles. It's highly opinionated, but I found it extremely useful as a starting point for setting up my own dotfiles. This repo seems simliar to me - the point is the sharing, not necessarily that you'd blindly run it without reading through it.
Erase your darlings: immutable infrastructure for mutable systems | Apr 2020
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I experimented with a version of this: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles. It worked ok. Still had a few things I had to tweak, but if you have a few things you want to keep it's easy. I basically only use a brewfile + a shell script to set a few defaults and some configs for iterm + kitty that I keep in my personal repo. Makes the most repetitive bits a lot easier. The MAS homebrew stuff didn't work too well when I migrated machines so I still had to install some stuff by hand.
Show HN: Make OS X Great Again – Mac app that fixes the annoying parts of OS X | Jul 2018
Make great again, would imply there was a time that the OS was overall better than it is today, which is of course rather silly since while there an incredibly long list of small imrpovements we would all love to see, there is no previous version of macOS that I imagine that see as being greater and thus would revert too. But would love to see app like, "Make OS X Even Better. Hard to imagine an app that could fix all of those things. As anything you defaults you can change via terminal commands are already available for free on github like the popular https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles, unless this app plans to have core functionality versus just running terminal commands once.
Ask HN: How long does it take to setup your dev environment? | Mar 2018
macOS setup here.

I use https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles to get my setup done. Comes pretty much with a lot OTB!

Ask HN: What's your .bashrc? | Nov 2017
A mishmash of stuff I have copied from various public "dotfiles" repos.

Quite a few gems in here: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles

Ask HN: How do you install developer tools on a fresh system? | Jun 2016
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This might have what you're looking for, anyway it's a good starting point for a lot of commands to customize an OS X instance. https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles

Edit: AFAIK .DS_Store is only created when you use Finder. In the past couple of years I've only used the Finders to drag'n drop stuff between ~/Desktop and ~/Downloads, terminal for the rest, so .DS_Store files might not be a problem in practice.

Edit2: Google helps answer your original question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18015978/how-to-stop-crea...
What are your experiences using a Macbook for back end work? | Sep 2015
The Macbook is a solid bit of hardware with great durability. For development with Vagrant, you should make sure that the machine has the maximum RAM installed, and if it's an older one, you can do a SSD upgrade.

In addition, I cannot say enough good about the dotfiles project from https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles for making OSX a nice developer environment. Be sure to completely read through the .osx file before applying it though, and comment out the bits you don't like. If you maintain the .brew file and use it to install new apps (including apps via cask), you'll have a system that is very easy to replicate. iTerm2 with tmux is great for use with Vagrant environments too.

Ask HN: What's THE way to setup a OS X dev machine 2015? | May 2015
Homebrew and pretty much anything else that lets the *NIX of OS X shine through.

Check out Github's tools as they seem to use OS X heavily.

Homebrew - http://brew.sh/

Also the ~/.osx dotfiles in this repo (https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles) are quite handy especially space order locking. That used to drive me mad.

Finally Amethyst (https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst) is still a lil buggy but so nice to have. If you want to go the 'more OS X route' check out BetterTouchTool instead.

Ask HN: Moved from Windows to Macbook Pro – How can I get up to speed quickly? | Mar 2015
dot files are pretty nice to have [1]. Also see EmacsForOSX.com. Know the Readline shortcuts for editing most textboxes. Run $ man open to read about opening apps from the command line.

[1] https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles

A list of cool features of Git and GitHub | Jan 2015
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Better yet, if you just want to get to work and have a sexy terminal, use https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles

To install on Mac just run:

    git clone https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles.git && cd dotfiles && source bootstrap.sh
Ask HN: MacBook Air for Web Development? | Jul 2014
I think the machine is good enough. Portable and Fast. A little short on storage space, but if you don't hog it by huge files or photos then that is not a problem.

Also, I will add the following to the list of apps you should have:

- Flycut (Clipboard Manager)

- GasMask (host file editor)

- Sequel Pro (if you're using MySQL)

- Dotfiles by Mathias Bynens \n(https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles)

- Any of your favorite task/to-do list manager.

Feel free to add more.

Cleanmachine – from fresh install to usable OS X web dev machine | Mar 2014
These projects with the same goal also worth taking a look:

https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles

https://github.com/thoughtbot/laptop

http://boxen.github.com

https://github.com/jpsim/laptop

How to Set Up Git Completion and Repo State on OS X | May 2013
I'd also look at Mathias Bynens dotfiles repo.

https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles

Automating the setup of my perfect developer environment on OSX 10.8 | Jan 2013
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Check out http://dotfiles.github.com Most scripts have these bootstrap files, my dotfiles and more are based on this repo https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles with a very good setup script.