foundation is a package of software libraries and utilities that I download on every machine that I use. It includes:

• My preferred basic configuration for the shell, Vim, and Git
• A few useful scripts
• Utility libraries written in Python (from ian.prelude import *, from ian import colors, etc.)
• Bash helper functions (available with source "$IAN_BASH_PRELUDE")

I set up a new machine with the bootstrap.sh script, which can be downloaded with wget https://iafisher.com/bootstrap.sh. (This is an HTTP redirect to the master copy of the file on GitHub, so it is always up-to-date.)

bootstrap.sh creates two Git repositories: a clone of foundation in ~/.ian/foundation, and a "dotfiles" repository for machine-specific configuration.

• ~/.ian/bin is added to the PATH environment variable.
• ~/.ian/pythonpath is added to PYTHONPATH, so that I can import the ian library from a Python file anywhere on the machine.

Configuration files (~/.bashrc, etc.) are symlinked to the dotfiles repository.

The foundation repository can be updated by running ian.selfupdate.

• Python 3.11
• The Bash or Zsh shell
• Git

foundation does not require root access or the ability to install software.