New Machine Setup

Things to do on a new machine (e.g., new GCE VM).

GitHub

1. install git
2. generate an SSH key for GitHub.
   • Bash

       ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "YOUR_EMAIL_HERE"
       eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
       ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
     

   • Powershell

       ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "YOUR_EMAIL_HERE"
       start-ssh-agent
     

3. add the public key to GitHub: cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub here
4. git config stuff:

    git config --global user.name "YOUR_NAME_HERE"
    git config --global user.email "YOUR_EMAIL_HERE"
    git config --global core.filemode true
   

5. (optional for Unix) add keychain: sudo apt install keychain, then add the following to .bashrc:

    # Use `keychain` to load my SSH key
    /usr/bin/keychain -q --nogui $HOME/.ssh/id_ed25519
    source $HOME/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh
   

OS-specific

WSL

Add the following to .bashrc:

# allow opening webpages with Chrome
export BROWSER="/mnt/c/Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe"

This will allow opening URLs with sensible-browser, and was enough to make Chrome pop up e.g., when Google’s Python API wants to authenticate the user via a webpage prompt. To make xdg-open work additional fiddling is needed.