Ever wondered on what kind of setup I run my computational analyses? I’ve already written about some of my preferred tools, particularly Fedora Linux and Debian. I decided to take the next step and open source the full range of installer scripts and dotfiles I use to customize my development machines. These include:
- A setup and config script
- Installer scripts for Fedora and Debian packages (includes dependencides for common R packages)
- Installer script for my preferred R packages
- A script to clone all my public git repositories
Dotfiles are small text files that store configuration settings on Linux systems and are easily portable. They are aptly so named because their names starts with a dot (.) to let the system know that these are hidden files. You can store them in a GitHub repo like I do and when you setup a new system they are easily copied to make yourself instantly at home.
I use a neat trick I picked up somewhere on the internet to replace all existing config files with symbolic links to the git repository, so I don’t need to constantly re-copy them from the repo when I update my config.
Please note that in almost all cases you should not simply run these scripts as-published on your machine, but instead use them as an inspiration to create your own. Especially the first script will execute irreversible actions by deleting all current dotfiles of interest and replacing them with symbolic links to the ones in my git repo.