Starting a fresh environment on a new system isn’t a very common or regular task, but when you do, it comes in handy to have a quick and easy way to do it. To help with this, I keep my vim environment and my environment dot files in version control on Github.

I use Pathogen to manage my vim plugins. I follow the examples in this great article on plugin management with Pathogen to keep most of my plugins as git submodules. Installing my vim environment is just a matter of cloning the git repository and symlinking my vimrc.

I just spent some time cleaning up and organizing my dotfiles. I wasn’t even using my old dotfiles repository on GitHub, but I quickly rectified that. I now keep my dotfiles in ~/.dotfiles and symlink them to ~. There is a helper script in my dotfiles repository that sets up these symlinks.

Along with the usual bashrc, there are a few config files that aren’t as common. My ackrc defines a few convenient options and ignores directories with built artifacts in them. My (old) pythonrc defines a tab-completion function, although this might be outdated at this point. There’s a tm_properties config for TextMate 2.

Hopefully the fact that my configuration is out in the open will bring to light some useful features that I probably take for granted but you might not know about. So, go explore! Check out my inputrc, for example. I know that I discover new things almost every time I look at someone else’s vimrc or bashrc.

Do you have any configuration tips or tricks? Let me know.