Use Dropbox to keep your preferences across Computers

Sometimes it can be kind of painful to discover a cool new setting or mode for on of your favorite programs. For instance, I use TTYtter, a terminal based Twitter client. A few weeks into using it, I discovered it had ReadLine support for tab auto-completion of @usernames, in-line editing of posts and command history (up key). Awesome right? I know. Except, now I need to change my .ttytterrc file on my laptop, home computer, work computer, everywhere. Also, how do I get it there? USB drive, e-mail to myself, browse the network, etc. Being geeks, we don't want to go through all that.

Then I discovered Dropbox (that link is a referral link, here's the regular homepage). Not only is Dropbox a free 2GB of cloud storage for backing up your much needed files, but the really cool thing about Dropbox is that it automatically detects when files change and syncs them across all of your computers. Think about configuration files and read that again. Discover a new mode in any program with a config file and BAM! every computer you use has that mode enabled. The sync works in all directions so it doesn't matter which computer you make the change on, every computer gets it. Seems perfect, right?

Here's how it all works. When you install the Dropox client software on your computer, it will create a Dropbox folder with all your stuff in it. Add, delete or edit any file in this folder and Dropbox will sync it up to their servers, plus download the changes to any other computer running the Dropbox client with your account. It's kind of cool to have your desktop and laptop running next to each other and watch them download the changes instantly.

Back to business, I know what you are thinking, "All these files are in one Dropbox folder (and subfolders). My config file needs to be in my home directory. I still have to copy from my Dropbox to my home." Well, let's let the computer do the copying. Actually, let's not even waste time and space copying. Let's create a symlink to make the config files appear to be in your home folder but actually be stored in the Dropbox folder.

First, open a terminal, navigate to the Dropbox folder and create a new subfolder; I called mine 'configs.'

$ cd ~/Dropbox
$ mkdir configs
$ cd configs

Now, let's move the config file from the home folder into the Dropbox/configs folder and navigate to the home folder.

$ mv ~/.ttytterrc ~/Dropbox/configs/.ttytterrc
$ cd ~/

Here's the magic. We'll create a symlink (like a shortcut in Windows) which will make it appear that the file is in your home directory, but Dropbox will still keep track of it.

$ ln -s ~/Dropbox/configs/.ttytterrc ~/.ttytterrc

Rough Spot: If you get a file exists error, the link will not overwrite an existing file. Remove the file from where you are creating the link into (the home dir in our case).

Do this on all your computers, then you can edit the file directly from my home directory on any computer and the changes will be automatically propagated to all my other computers instantaneously.

Here are some other ideas for this technique which I haven't tried, but might be cool.

• Thunderbird Profile
• Media Library
• Flat data files

If you have any more or try one of these, let me know in the comments!

Trick out your Vim

Today, I'm going to add some plugins and scripts to make better use of Vim. I have not started this project and I will be updating this post throughout the day with my finds and experiences.

I generally use Vim to code web applications. My site at work run on PHP and at home I'm working with Ruby on Rails. So, I'll be looking for something to specifically help with that, but who knows what I'll find.

.vimrc

.vimrc is a file in your home directory. It contains a script which runs each time you start Vim. You can setup your configurations, preferences and plugins in here. The .vimrc is the starting point for fine tuning your Vim to exactly how you want it. If you are a beginner, I would recommend finding some more advanced users' .vimrc's and, at least, check them out, if not start using them for yourself. I started with Todd Werth's .vimrc file. He keeps his in a separate folder and uses a symlink to put them in his home folder. I strongly recommend this as well. You can automatically sync your .vimrc (or any other files) across computers with Dropbox. See how in my post on how to Use Dropbox to keep your preferences across Computers.

Here are some useful lines to start you out:

" Set tabs to 2 sapces
set softtabstop=2
set shiftwidth=2
set tabstop=2
set expandtab

" Wildmenu - show a tab completion matches list
set wildmenu
set wildmode=list:longest,full

Again, search the google machine and checkout github for more samples and if you find anything cool, let me know in the comments.

Plugins

Autoclose

This first plugin automatically closes quotes, parenthesis, brackets, etc. for you. If you type a single quote, another single quote is added after the cursor. You can type an end paren to move the cursor after the autoclosed characters. This is helpful after nested autocloses. For instance, in PHP, I often find myself passing array values to a function:
run_trail($locmotives['lionel|'])
This pipe in the above example is the cursor position after the last l in lionel. I can simply hit ) and the cursor will jump out of the single quote, square bracket AND end paren. Simple.

Autoclose is developed by Karl Guertin and can be found at http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1849

See ya Soon!