home

This file is part of eRCaGuy_dotfiles: https://github.com/ElectricRCAircraftGuy/eRCaGuy_dotfiles

See also

1. ../useful_startup_programs.md

Notes

These files in this home directory all go in your Linux Ubuntu home directory: ~, AKA: $HOME, AKA: /home/my_username.

Reminder: you cannot open up the .git_editor.sublime-project file in Sublime Text to edit it as a text file. This is because it has a Sublime Text project file extension (.sublime-project), so Sublime Text reads it as a project file instead of letting you edit it as a text file. To overcome this, simply open it in gedit or some other text editor to edit it as a text file.

gedit .git_editor.sublime-project

You can also use nano at the command-line:

nano .git_editor.sublime-project

Or, use cat to just view its contents:

cat .git_editor.sublime-project

Eclipse User Dictionary Setup

See .eclipse-user-dictionary--README.md.

Terminal Setup: Installation & Usage Instructions for .profile, .bashrc, .bash_aliases, and .bash_aliases_private

1. Installation

The ~/.profile file sources (imports) ~/.bashrc if it exists, which (near the very end of it) sources ~/.bash_aliases if it exists, which (at the very end of it) sources ~/.bash_aliases_private if it exists. This segmentation and hierarchy is intentional.

To install these files, first make backup copies of your local files, if they already exist, so you don't accidentally overwrite them and lose everything you already have:

mkdir -p ~/bak
cp -i ~/.profile ~/bak
cp -i ~/.bashrc ~/bak
cp -i ~/.bash_aliases ~/bak
cp -i ~/.bash_aliases_private ~/bak

Now, copy over the files from this repo to your computer. We will copy .profile, .bashrc, and .bash_aliases_private so that you can freely modify only your own copy of each. However, for .bash_aliases, let's do something different: we will create a symlink (symbolic link) to it from your home dir to the .bash_aliases file in this repo so that you'll always get this repo's latest updates whenever you pull this repo, and so that if you do decide to change or add something there that will benefit everyone you can then easily open up a Pull Request on GitHub to request that I pull your changes in that file back into the main repo.

cd path/to/eRCaGuy_dotfiles/home
# Copy these files
cp -i .profile ~/.profile
cp -i .bashrc ~/.bashrc
cp -i .bash_aliases_private ~/.bash_aliases_private
# Make a symlink to this file
ln -si "${PWD}/.bash_aliases" ~/.bash_aliases

Now close and re-open all of your terminals, OR re-source your ~/.bashrc file in each terminal by running this in each of them:

. ~/.bashrc

With the above configuration, add all of your personal configuration settings to ~/.bash_aliases_private. If there are duplicate bash aliases or functions, the definitions in this ~/.bash_aliases_private file will override anything inside ~/.bashrc prior to this code block:

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

...and will override anything inside ~/.bash_aliases prior to this code block:

# Import this "~/.bash_aliases_private" file, if it exists.
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases_private ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases_private
fi

Note that anything in the very bottom of your ~/.bashrc file, after the code just above which imports the ~/.bash_aliases file, will override all other files, including the ~/.bash_aliases and ~/.bash_aliases_private files, since the definitions which are made last are the ones which stick when the sourcing process is complete.

2. Background information

On Linux distributions, such as Linux Ubuntu, your ~/.profile file gets called each time you open a terminal. The .profile file provided here sources (imports) your ~/.bashrc bash startup file, if it exists and if you are running bash, as well as adds your ~/bin and ~/.local/bin executable (binary) directories to your PATH so long as those directories exist too.

Your ~/.bashrc file is known as your "bash terminal startup file". Since it is sourced (imported) by the ~/.profile file each time a terminal is opened, it can be used to configure your terminal environment. This includes configuring or setting environment variables, modifying your PATH, setting terminal colors, auto-completion, setting a terminal title, etc.

Read more about bash sourcing and exporting variables in my answer here: Stack Overflow: Unix: What is the difference between source and export?.

One important environment variable to configure is your primary prompt string, known as Prompt String 1, or PS1. This is the string that shows at the beginning of your prompt, and usually contains your username, computer name, current path, etc, followed by the $ symbol. You can, however, fully customize this prompt string, including its colors! Read more about it here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Bash/Prompt_customization#Prompts. It even allows you to customize the terminal title, or show your currently-checked-out git repo whenever you are inside of a folder containing a git repository. I have modified this variable for you, to perform both of these operations.

The .bashrc file is also a popular place to define custom bash aliases, which are function-like command-substitutions you can call at the command-line, as well as bash functions. Read more about bash aliases just below.

3. About Bash Aliases

What's a bash "alias"? An alias is a command you can call that will call something else. It's kind of like a bash function, but more simplistic: an alias in bash is more like a macro in C. See help alias for more details.

You can create a bash alias in the ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_aliases, or ~/.bash_aliases_private file by adding a line like this:

alias ll='ls -alF'

Now, after opening up a new bash terminal, OR re-sourcing your ~/.bashrc file in your existing terminal by calling . ~/.bashrc, you can call ll, and it is as though you had typed ls -alF since that is what you aliased ll to above!

To see ALL of your currently-available aliases in your terminal, call alias. To see just what is inside of a given alias, call alias some_alias. Here's an example call and output. Notice how calling alias some_alias shows the exact definition of some_alias (ll in this case)!:

$ alias ll
alias ll='ls -alF'

Aliases can be overridden! This means if you have the following, only the last version of this alias definition remains in force:

alias ll='ls -a'
alias ll='ls -alF'  # only this last definition remains in force

So, calling alias ll to ask what the current definition of ll is will reveal the following:

$ alias ll
alias ll='ls -alF'

Bash functions can also be overridden in this way. The last definition is what remains in force.

Each time you add or edit an alias in one of the files above, you must get your terminal to re-source it (re-import it) before it is available for usage in its new form. There are 3 ways to do this:

1. (Method 1) Close and re-open your terminal.
2. (Methods 2 and 3) Manually re-source it like this:

   # recommended, since this is the POSIX-compliant way to do it
   . ~/.bashrc
   # OR (same thing for bash)
   source ~/.bashrc