In my previous post,
I mentioned syncing dotfiles as a future task. I considered using Nextcloud to sync my home
directory, but realistically I only want a small subset of files to sync between devices. I
also don’t necessarily want to share sensitive data like SSH keys or device-specific
configuration the same way I do dotfiles. For now, I’ve decided to put things in a
git repository; this makes updates simple git actions
and allows me to pull everything to a new environment easily.
.bashrc
I previously documented my .bashrc but have added a couple new things.
alias sudosu="sudo bash --rcfile ~/.bashrc"
if [ -n "${SUDO_USER}" ]; then
alias nano="nano --rcfile \"/home/${SUDO_USER}/.nanorc\""
fi
The sudosu alias allows me to open a root shell with my customized .bashrc, without modifying the root directory.
This means any changes to ~/.bashrc are available in an elevated shell automatically. The nano alias likewise
applies customizations in an elevated shell.
.nanorc
The nanorc file is documented here. I keep mine at
~/.nanorc for simplicity and have a few customizations:
set smarthome
# home goes to the first non-whitespace character instead of the start of the line
set keycolor cyan,gray
set titlecolor cyan,gray
# color to match my other terminal customizations
There are many other ways to customize nano, and many other editors available.
.tmux.conf
As I continue to use tmux, I’ve found some helpful customizations that make it
easier to use. The config file is pretty big, so I’ll go over it in sections.
# Custom Prefix
set -g prefix C-space
Rebinds the prefix to ctrl+space which is a bit easier to reach than
ctrl+c.
# Shortcut to sync panes
bind C-x setw synchronize-panes
Adds a shorcut to synchronize inputs between all panes. This is occasionally useful for things like benchmarking multiple systems, or running tasks in parallel.
# Shortcut to respawn panw
bind M-r respawn-pane -k
This is particularly useful on my laptop, where I’ll sleep the machine with an SSH session left over and come back later. This preserves the pane layout but kills any processes (like a dead SSH session).
# Mouse Scrolling
set -g mouse on
Enables mouse actions, such as scrolling and pane selection/resizing.
# Mouse Copy
bind -T copy-mode C-C send -X copy-pipe-no-clear "xsel -i --clipboard"\; display "Copied"
bind -T copy-mode-vi C-C send -X copy-pipe-no-clear "xsel -i --clipboard"\; display "Copied"
Enables copying highlighted text with ctrl+c; I prefer using the mouse over the
keyboard shortcuts, mostly because its what I’m used to.
# Split
bind S-down split-window -v
bind S-right split-window -h
Rebinds shift+down and shift+right to open a new split below or to the right
of the selected window. Much easier to remember than the defaults that I’ve already
forgotten.
These are both handled after the prefix command.
# Navigation
bind -n C-Left select-pane -L
bind -n C-Right select-pane -R
bind -n C-Up select-pane -U
bind -n C-Down select-pane -D
bind -n C-S-Left previous-window
bind -n C-S-Right next-window
Faster keybindings to navigate between panes and easier to remember bindings to switch
views. ctrl+arrow to move between panes (no prefix required) and
ctrl+shift+left/right to move between windows.
# Config
bind R source-file ~/.tmux.conf \; display "Config reloaded!"
Adds a shortcut (shift+R) to reload config and display a confirmation
in the lower left of the window.
# Colors
set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"
set -g pane-border-style fg='#008b8b'
set -g pane-active-border-style fg='#34E2E2'
set -g message-style bg='#222222',fg='#34E2E2'
set -g status-style bg='#222222',fg='#AD7FA8'
Sets window chrome to match other colors (nano and my custom prompt).
# Status
set -g status-left '#{?client_prefix,#[fg=#008b8b]█, }'
set -g status-interval 1
set-window-option -g window-status-style fg='#008b8b',bg=default
set-window-option -g window-status-current-style fg='#222222',bg='#ad7fa8'
Customizes the status bar. When the prefix is pressed, a colored block in the bottom left of the terminal provides visual confirmation (especially helpful when you have nested tmux sessions, such as an SSH connection where the remote is also running tmux). The status styling gives the active window an inverted scheme to be easily identified at a glance.
I figured out most of this through trial and error and anticipate more
changes as I continue to adapt my workflows to use tmux. There are
countless guides and examples on the internet, so I will definitely be
experimenting with more plugins and options.
.dircolors
For most cases, the default highlighting in directory listings works great.
I’ve noticed in a few terminals though, you can end up with low contrast
between text and background colors. If you’re customizing everything in
tmux as I am, it is nice to make sure text from ls, etc. matches the
overall theme, and more importantly is easy to read.
To load custom directory colors, I added to my .bashrc:
[ -f ~/.dircolors ] && eval "$(dircolors ~/.dircolors)"
To generate the default .dircolors file:
dircolors -p > .dircolors
I left the majority of these as the default values, but there were two fields I changed because the green text on blue background was very low contrast and hard to read:
STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE 30;45 # dir that is sticky and other-writable (+t,o+w)
OTHER_WRITABLE 26;45 # dir that is other-writable (o+w) and not sticky
I wasn’t able to find an official reference for the color codes used here, but this StackExchange post was a very helpful reference.
Synchronizing Changes
As mentioned in the beginning of this post, all of these files are saved
in a git repository for easy synchronization. To link the repo files to
the expected locations, I have a simple setup script along with the
dotfiles. This only needs to be run once on a computer and then any
subsequent updates are simply pulled from git.
Side note, if you’re not using SSH for git operations, do it. I spent years dealing with tokens for password authentication (realistically, my IDE did this automatically 99% of the time) and just uploading a key to GitHub/GitLab and replacing
httpwithsshobviates the whole thing.