cade’s dotfiles

Personal dotfiles for macOS and Linux. One command bootstraps a complete dev environment – idempotent, safe on shared NFS home directories across CPU architectures. No sudo required on Linux.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cadebrown/dotfiles/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

Prompts for name and email once. Re-run anytime to converge.

What gets installed

Dotfiles and shell

chezmoi manages dotfiles as templates in home/ and applies them to ~/. Both zsh and bash get identical login profiles with PLAT detection, PATH setup, and tool activation.

• zsh: oh-my-zsh with pure prompt, autosuggestions, fast-syntax-highlighting, completions, and lazy nvm loading (~140ms startup)
• bash: minimal config with git branch prompt, shared aliases, zoxide, fzf completions
• git: global config with name/email from chezmoi data, delta as pager
• SSH: templated config from home/dot_ssh/config.tmpl

Packages

A single packages/Brewfile drives both platforms. On macOS, Homebrew installs native bottles plus casks (GUI apps). On Linux, Homebrew installs to a custom per-CPU prefix (~/.local/$PLAT/brew/) with its own glibc – fully self-contained, no sudo.

if OS.mac? blocks in the Brewfile handle macOS-only casks and tools; Linux skips them silently.

Languages

Rust tools are installed via cargo-binstall which downloads pre-built binaries from GitHub releases when available, falling back to source compilation. On macOS, rustup comes from Homebrew (code-signed, required on Sequoia+ where the linker enforces provenance).

AI tools

• Claude Code – native binary downloaded from Anthropic’s release bucket, plus plugins from packages/claude-plugins.txt and MCP servers from packages/claude-mcp.txt
• Codex CLI – native binary from GitHub releases

macOS-specific

• System settings (install/macos-settings.sh) – Dock autohide, Finder extensions/path bar, fast key repeat, tap to click, PNG screenshots, Safari dev menu, iTerm2 prefs
• Services (install/macos-services.sh) – Colima registered as a login service (rootless Docker without Docker Desktop)

Auth (opt-in)

install/auth.sh is an interactive helper that creates ~/.{service}.env files (chmod 600) for GITHUB_TOKEN, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, and OPENAI_API_KEY. These are sourced automatically by all install scripts. Run during bootstrap with DF_DO_AUTH=1 or standalone anytime.

Home directories

install/dirs.sh creates ~/dev, ~/bones, and ~/misc (configurable via DF_DIRS). On systems with scratch space, these become symlinks directly under $SCRATCH/ for fast local storage.

PLAT isolation

Every compiled binary lives under ~/.local/$PLAT/ where PLAT is detected from CPU features at shell startup. On a shared NFS home, each machine installs into its own PLAT directory – binaries are isolated, text configs are shared freely.

~/.local/plat_Linux_x86-64-v4/    # AVX-512 (Ice Lake+, Zen 4+)
~/.local/plat_Linux_x86-64-v3/    # AVX2 (Haswell+, Zen 2+)
~/.local/plat_Linux_x86-64-v2/    # SSE4.2 (Nehalem+)
~/.local/plat_Linux_aarch64/       # ARM Linux (Graviton, Ampere)
~/.local/plat_Darwin_arm64/        # Apple Silicon
~/.local/plat_Darwin_x86-64/       # Intel Mac

The shell profile detects the current machine’s PLAT and puts only that directory’s paths on PATH. One home directory, many machines, no conflicts.

Each PLAT also gets CPU-specific compiler flags (-march=x86-64-v3, etc.) via .plat_env.sh scripts, so tools compiled from source use the best available instruction set.

macOS vs Linux

Bootstrap modes

bootstrap.sh              # install (default) — full idempotent setup
bootstrap.sh update       # git pull + chezmoi apply + refresh tools
bootstrap.sh upgrade      # update + brew upgrade + cargo upgrade

Any step can be skipped with DF_DO_*=0 env vars. See Bootstrap for the full list.

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