Dotfiles and Organization: A Clean Setup on My New MacBook

After setting up my new MacBook with a focus on clean and minimal installations, I faced two main goals:

1. Organize the dotfiles in my home directory.
2. Create a GitHub repository to sync dotfiles across multiple computers.

Here’s a concise overview of how I tackled these objectives using GNU Stow.

Using GNU Stow to Manage Dotfiles

I followed a great guide by Josean Martinez titled How To Easily Manage Your Dotfiles With GNU Stow.

GNU Stow is the key tool in this setup — easily installable via Homebrew. It works by letting you keep your dotfiles organized in a dedicated directory (usually ~/dotfiles/) and manage symbolic links in your home directory automatically.

For my setup, I organized configurations for:

• Aspell
• NeoVim
• iTerm2

This approach not only cleaned up my home directory but also enabled me to manage and sync my configuration files easily via GitHub.

Note: I won’t cover the full setup here since Josean’s blog post and accompanying YouTube video provide an excellent, step-by-step explanation.

Syncing Dotfiles with GitHub

Once the ~/dotfiles/ directory was well-structured and Stow had created the necessary symlinks, the final step was to push everything to a private GitHub repository.

A small hiccup was that I accidentally started the repository with a master branch instead of main. After a quick fix, I now have a clean dotfiles repo that stores all my configurations online, allowing me to push or pull changes and keep settings consistent across all my devices.

Here’s a snapshot of my dotfiles repo directory structure for reference:

├── .aspell.en.prepl
├── .aspell.en.pws
├── .config
│   ├── iterm2
│   │   ├── AppSupport -> /Users/amos/Library/Application Support/iTerm2
│   │   └── sockets
│   │       └── secrets
│   └── nvim
│       ├── .github
│       │   ├── ISSUE_TEMPLATE
│       │   │   └── bug_report.md
│       │   ├── pull_request_template.md
│       │   └── workflows
│       │       └── stylua.yml
│       ├── .gitignore
│       ├── .stylua.toml
│       ├── doc
│       │   ├── kickstart.txt
│       │   └── tags
│       ├── init.lua
│       ├── lazy-lock.json
│       ├── lua
│       │   ├── custom
│       │   │   ├── core
│       │   │   │   ├── init.lua
│       │   │   │   ├── keymaps.lua
│       │   │   │   └── options.lua
│       │   │   └── plugins
│       │   │       ├── alpha.lua
│       │   │       ├── autopairs.lua
│       │   │       ├── bufferline.lua
│       │   │       ├── colorscheme.lua
│       │   │       ├── conform.lua
│       │   │       ├── guess-indent.lua
│       │   │       ├── indent_line.lua
│       │   │       ├── lazydev.lua
│       │   │       ├── lazygit.lua
│       │   │       ├── lspconfig.lua
│       │   │       ├── luasnip.lua
│       │   │       ├── mini.lua
│       │   │       ├── nvim-cmp.lua
│       │   │       ├── nvim-tree.lua
│       │   │       ├── telescope.lua
│       │   │       ├── todo-comments.lua
│       │   │       ├── treesitter.lua
│       │   │       ├── vimtex.lua
│       │   │       └── which-key.lua
│       │   └── kickstart
│       │       ├── health.lua
│       │       ├── info.lua
│       │       └── plugins
│       │           └── lint.lua
│       ├── LuaSnip
│       │   └── all.lua
│       ├── node_modules
│       │   ├── .bin
│       │   │   ├── node-gyp-build -> ../node-gyp-build/bin.js
│       │   │   ├── node-gyp-build-optional -> ../node-gyp-build/optional.js
│       │   │   ├── node-gyp-build-test -> ../node-gyp-build/build-test.js
│       │   │   └── tree-sitter -> ../tree-sitter-cli/cli.js
│       │   ├── .package-lock.json
│       │   └── tree-sitter-cli
│       │       ├── cli.js
│       │       ├── dsl.d.ts
│       │       ├── install.js
│       │       ├── LICENSE
│       │       ├── package.json
│       │       ├── README.md
│       │       └── tree-sitter
│       ├── package-lock.json
│       ├── package.json
│       └── README.md
├── .git
├── .zprofile
├── .zsh_sessions
│   ├── _expiration_check_timestamp
│   └── 0EC8B8A7-66B2-4DB2-82C0-804BC3207BD6.session
├── .zshrc
└── README.md

Pretty neat, if you ask me!

Bonus: Managing .zcompdump Files from Oh My Zsh

Finally, I managed to move the annoying .zcompdump files—created automatically by Oh My Zsh in my home folder—into a separate directory. This keeps my home clean and avoids clutter.

For anyone facing the same issue, here’s a helpful Stack Overflow post with instructions on how to do this.