I had to set up multiple machines with slightly varying configs repeatedly. After having to SSH into the machines once in a while and deal with default bash, I realized that I’m seriously not used to the lack of features, aliases1, and theme(s) that zsh + oh-my-zsh provide. In fact, I feel slightly less efficient when forced to use just plain bash.
Many years ago, I read multiple comments recommending Ansible to automate tasks. Although Ansible may have been VERY overkill for this (a simple shell script would have sufficed), I decided to try my hand at it to, ya know, learn something new. Apart from the docs2, I used Lorenzo Bettini’s playbook and Gabrgomes’ playbook as references.
I’m sure I’m not doing it the best way; instead of running the playbook locally, it would make more sense to have a control node that executes these tasks remotely on targeted hosts. I also have no doubt that there are better ways to write Ansible Playbooks. But eh, this gets the job done 🤷. This was a 2-4 hour experiment so please don’t judge me. TIA.
Ensure that python3-pip is installed, optionally create a virtualenv, and pip3 install ansible. Stuff this in a shell script, or use the control node & remote hosts method.
min-user-setup.ansible.yml:
---
# run me with `ansible-playbook -K min-user-setup.ansible.yml`
- name: Setup Compooter
hosts: localhost
tasks:
- name: Install git, zsh, tmux, fzf, xclip, vim
become: true
ansible.builtin.package:
name:
- git
- zsh
- tmux
- fzf
- xclip
- vim
state: present
- name: Change user shell to zsh
become: true
name: "{{ ansible_env.USER }}"
shell: /usr/bin/zsh
- name: Download Oh My Zsh installation script
ansible.builtin.get_url:
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh
dest: /tmp/install_ohmyzsh.sh
mode: "0777"
- name: Run OhMyZsh installation script
ansible.builtin.command:
cmd: sh /tmp/install_ohmyzsh.sh
- name: Change .zshrc theme
ansible.builtin.replace:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.zshrc"
regexp: 'ZSH_THEME=\"robbyrussell\"'
replace: 'ZSH_THEME="essembeh"'
- name: Enable .zshrc DISABLE_UNTRACKED_FILES_DIRTY
ansible.builtin.replace:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.zshrc"
regexp: '# DISABLE_UNTRACKED_FILES_DIRTY=\"true\"'
replace: 'DISABLE_UNTRACKED_FILES_DIRTY="true"'
- name: Disable .zshrc omz:update
ansible.builtin.replace:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.zshrc"
regexp: "# zstyle ':omz:update' mode disabled"
replace: "zstyle ':omz:update' mode disabled"
- name: Change tmux config
ansible.builtin.copy:
dest: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.tmux.conf"
content: |
set -g default-terminal "screen-256color"
set -g status-bg red
set -g status-fg black
mode: "0664"
- name: Create .local/bin
ansible.builtin.file:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.local/bin/"
state: directory
mode: "0775"
- name: Get custom utilities
ansible.builtin.get_url:
url: https://...
dest: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.local/bin/custom-utils"
mode: "0775"
- name: Add .local/bin to path
ansible.builtin.lineinfile:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.zshrc"
insertafter: 'export ZSH=\$HOME/\.oh-my-zsh'
line: "path+={{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.local/bin/"
# clipboard: `echo 'hello' | cb`
# may have to use xsel if xclip doesn't work (xsel -ip)
- name: Add alias cb
ansible.builtin.lineinfile:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.zshrc"
insertafter: "EOF"
line: 'alias cb="xclip -i"'
- name: Add alias objd
ansible.builtin.lineinfile:
path: "{{ ansible_env.HOME }}/.zshrc"
insertafter: "EOF"
line: 'alias objd="objdump -dlS --visualize-jumps=color"'
...
Footnotes
1 Gotta love glod and glols. These aliases of
git log --graph come with the oh-my-zsh git
plugin. A lot
of these aliases have become muscle memory at this point. ↩
2 Ansible’s docs are pretty darn good, but holy moly that search is occasionally difficult to go through due to the sheer number of features. It’s a good thing that built-in gets ranked to the top. Although… when I was experimenting with it a week `or so ago, built-in wasn’t ranked to the top. Looks like they changed it — going through the recent release notes, it looks like they tweak the weights of pages for ordering search results. I may have been visiting the docs when there was improper weighting. Regardless, good documentation once you get the hang of it after a half-hour. ↩