cade’s dotfiles

Personal dotfiles for macOS and Linux — one command sets up a complete, reproducible dev environment on any machine.

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

What this gives you

• One bootstrap command — installs every tool, dotfile, and language runtime from scratch
• PLAT isolation — compiled binaries live under ~/.local/$(uname -m)-$(uname -s)/, so two machines sharing an NFS home directory never conflict
• No sudo on Linux — Homebrew runs inside a rootless container; everything installs to user paths
• Idempotent — every script is safe to re-run; running bootstrap on a second machine just installs that machine’s arch-specific tools
• Single source of truth — one Brewfile for both macOS and Linux; if OS.mac? blocks handle the differences automatically
• Fast shell startup — lazy nvm loading, single compinit, ~140ms warm startup

How it works

chezmoi manages dotfiles as templates in home/ and applies them to ~/. The bootstrap script wires everything together:

bootstrap.sh
  ↓ chezmoi apply        dotfiles → ~/
  ↓ install/zsh.sh       oh-my-zsh + plugins
  ↓ homebrew.sh          packages from Brewfile (macOS)
    linux-packages.sh    packages from Brewfile (Linux, via container)
  ↓ install/node.sh      nvm → Node.js
  ↓ install/rust.sh      rustup → cargo tools
  ↓ install/python.sh    uv → Python venv
  ↓ install/claude.sh    Claude Code + plugins + MCP servers

Compiled tools land under ~/.local/$PLAT/ — a different directory per arch+OS, so a shared home has no conflicts. Text configs (dotfiles) are shared freely; they’re arch-neutral by design.

Sections

Setup — getting started on a new machine

Usage — ongoing updates and maintenance