Dotfiles

I’ve long enjoyed painstakingly constructing dotfiles or *rc files for various programs I use frequently. They allow such exact configuration and are so portable between systems. If only Firefox worked so simply.

Here are some of mine:

• Zsh is an amazing shell. It has unbelievable completion abilities, and is just gorgeous (pictured). I enjoy Vi-mode in my shells and my zshrc has a Vi-style mode display that I cobbled together from a few examples on the 'net. It also includes a small shell-function called dotsync that keeps the rest of these dotfiles current.
• I’ve spent days of my life fine-tuning the best goddamn vimrc in the whole world. Parts of it are very much tailored to me, but I’ve tried to comment all my reasons for each option.
• GNU screen brings tabs and resume-able sessions to your command-line work, this utility is too useful to overlook. My screenrc file illustrates tabs as best as possible (pictured).

There’s no reason you should work with an ugly terminal. It’s 2005, your computer can handle it. And nothings beats sitting down at a new computer and typing dotsync to have your shell, editor, and browser preferences and bookmarks instantly configured just they way you like 'em. :-)

Update 2009–12–16

I have long-since switched from the home-rolled dotsync() to keeping my *rc files under version control.