Setup Devenv With Chezmoi

Dev Env with Chezmoi

Personal-portfolio extensions to setup-devenv. This skill assumes a chezmoi-managed home directory and stays focused on the chezmoi-specific plumbing the portable skill deliberately omits.

When to Use

• Adding a pinned-version installer for a tool that ships only via a vendor script (gcloud, aws-cli, Snowflake Cortex, etc.).
• Updating the canonical dot_envrc.project.example template that new projects copy.
• Standardizing how ~/.local/bin is wired up across projects.

If you're not on chezmoi, use setup-devenv directly. Substitute Brewfile / Nix / your own dotfile manager.

Pinned Installer Pattern

~/.local/share/chezmoi/run_onchange_after_install-.sh.tmpl

Skeleton:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

_VERSION=""
INSTALL_DIR="$HOME/.local/share//${_VERSION}"
BIN_PATH="${INSTALL_DIR}/"
BIN_LINK="$HOME/.local/bin/"

# Guard must test the actual install path, not a bin/ subdir, or the script
# re-downloads on every `chezmoi apply`.
if [ -x "${BIN_PATH}" ]; then
  exit 0
fi

mkdir -p "${INSTALL_DIR}"
curl -fsSL "" -o "${BIN_PATH}"
chmod +x "${BIN_PATH}"

ln -sf "${BIN_PATH}" "${BIN_LINK}"

Conventions:

• Pin the version at the top in ALL_CAPS. Bumping is a one-line diff.
• Install to ~/.local/share///. Versioned subdirs let you roll back without re-downloading.
• Symlink into ~/.local/bin/. Keeps $PATH stable.
• Mirror the structure of existing scripts like run_onchange_after_install-cloud-clis.sh.tmpl or run_onchange_after_install-cortex.sh.tmpl. Consistency makes the directory scannable.

Project envrc Template

The canonical project envrc lives at:

~/.local/share/chezmoi/dot_envrc.project.example

When a new project needs .envrc, copy this file into the project root, strip the per-language idioms that don't apply, and direnv allow. The portable patterns the file demonstrates (layout python, use fnm, PATH_add bin, dotenv, source_up) are documented in setup-devenv; this skill owns the file itself.

Apply Loop

After editing any of the above:

chezmoi diff
chezmoi apply

Run chezmoi diff first so you can confirm the rendered output matches expectations before overwriting the home directory.

Gotchas

• Don't run installers eagerly. run_onchange_after_install-*.sh.tmpl re-runs only when its content changes. If the version pin doesn't change, chezmoi will skip it; this is intentional.
• No secrets in templates. Use manage-secrets (1Password) or .env references. Templated installer scripts end up in git history.
• Version subdirs over latest symlinks. A latest symlink obscures which version a script actually saw.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: urmzd
• Source: urmzd/dotfiles
• License: Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.