Deprecation Notice: I revamped my dotfiles recently (Jul 2019) and moved them to a new repository.

The following set-up instructions assume that you are working on a machine with Ubuntu 16.04. If you're using a different distro, use this as a guideline only, and search up the instructions relevant to your distro at each step.

sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install zsh

Set Zsh as the default shell

chsh -s $(which zsh)

Note: we require at least v2.3 for true color support.

cd ~/Downloads

sudo apt-get install -y libevent-dev libncurses-dev make

wget https://github.com/tmux/tmux/releases/download/2.3/tmux-2.3.tar.gz
tar -xvzf tmux-2.3.tar.gz

cd tmux-2.3/
./configure && make
sudo make install

Feel free to delete the tmux-2.3 directory and the tmux-2.3.tar.gz file after finishing installation.

Note: we require at least Vim 8 to use some of the plugins.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/vim
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vim

Make sure to open vim at least once to check that the correct version (Vim 8) has been installed.

We also need to have support for Python scripting (for YouCompleteMe). Run vim --version | grep python and ensure that there is a + before either Python 2 or 3. If you don't, you will need to compile vim from source (don't worry, it's easy).

Clone the repository, then create the appropriate symlinks for your dotfiles:

ln -s ~/.dotfiles/zsh/zshrc ~/.zshrc
ln -s ~/.dotfiles/tmux/tmux.conf ~/.tmux.conf
ln -s ~/.dotfiles/vim/vimrc ~/.vimrc
ln -s ~/.dotfiles/git/gitconfig ~/.gitconfig

Create the Workspace and Quicklinks directories in the home directory if they don't exist yet.

• One Dark Theme for Gnome Terminal

  wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/denysdovhan/gnome-terminal-one/master/one-dark.sh && . one-dark.sh
  

  You may want to make a copy of the resulting terminal profile and tweak the colors a bit to suit your liking.

• Powerline Fonts (for the Powerline strips in Vim and Tmux)

  sudo apt-get install fonts-powerline
  

  Note: while this will correct the incorrect/missing symbols problem, you may still need to explicitly download the specific Powerline fonts you wish to use.

  To explicitly download and install certain fonts, just do the following:

  • Download the font file (usually a .ttf or .otf file) from the Powerline Fonts repository

  • Copy it into ~/.fonts (create the directory if it's missing)

  • sudo fc-cache -fv

    Then simply configure the terminal's settings to use the particular font you want.

    For our case in particular, we like to use Droid Sans Mono for Powerline Bold (Size 10), and we also prefer to turn off "Allow bold text" in the terminal settings.

• Zgen

  git clone https://github.com/tarjoilija/zgen.git ~/.zgen
  

• Tree

  sudo apt-get install tree
  

• Nemo File Explorer (optional)

  sudo apt-get install nemo
  

  If you don't want to use Nemo, make sure to change the file explorer used by the open alias in the Zsh configuration file.

• Tmux Plugin Manager

  git clone https://github.com/tmux-plugins/tpm ~/.tmux/plugins/tpm
  

  Hit <PREFIX>-I while in a Tmux session to install plugins.

• Clang (including LibClang) and ClangTidy (for YouCompleteMe and Neomake)

  sudo apt-get install clang
  sudo apt-get install clang-tidy
  

• Exuberant Ctags (for indexing language objects; useful for things like Go-to-Definition)

  sudo apt-get install exuberant-ctags
  

• SilverSearcher (for speeding up indexing in CtrlP)

  sudo apt-get install silversearcher-ag
  

  Ensure that ag exists in /usr/bin/. Also, try invoking ag in the terminal at least once.

• YouCompleteMe Setup

  Setting up YouCompleteMe is actually fairly straightforward; simply follow the instructions for your OS here (Ubuntu in our case).

  The short set-up guide covers which external dependencies you need to install. Make sure these dependencies are installed before letting vim-plug build and install YouCompleteMe. If you accidentally let vim-plug attempt the build before installing the dependencies, simply delete the ~/.vim/plugged/YouCompleteMe directory, then open vim and enter :PlugInstall to retry the installation (this is, in general, a fool-proof way to reinstall YouCompleteMe any time).

  The short guide also includes instructions on how to install YouCompleteMe with semantic completions for supported languages on top of the base YouCompleteMe installation, as well as the dependencies you will need to install for each language (note that for C/C++, we already installed its depedency, libclang).

  That's it. You don't actually need to refer to the full installation guide unless you're on a different distro or something goes wrong with the installation.

  Lastly, read the sections for the languages you plan to use with semantic completion in the user guide to see set-up steps specific to that language (note that C/C++ is already taken care of for you via the .ycm_extra_conf.py).

• LaTeX Setup (optional)

  TeXLive 2016 (a LaTeX distro):

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonathonf/texlive-2016
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install texlive
  

  Latexmk (LaTeX compiler used by VimTeX):

  sudo apt-get install latexmk
  

  Zathura (for viewing the PDF doc; supports closer integration with VimTeX)

  sudo apt-get install zathura
  

  Xdotool (required by VimTeX for performing forward searches on Zathura)

  sudo apt-get install xdotool
  

  To verify that your set-up works, try compiling this sample LaTeX file.

  If you're trying (and failing) to compile an existing LaTeX project, you might be lacking some of the LaTeX packages it's using.

That's all!