Ask HN: What's your new computer/VM bootstrapping approach?

I'm finally feeling that I've gone through the setup process for a new computer enough times that I'm ready to setup a repo to host some install script I can just curl into bash. Some thoughts I have so far:

- goal is to have something like `curl https://somesiteorgithub.com/myscript | bash` which will bring a given computer up to date with whatever the latest changes are that I've made to my setup - script should be re-runnable without causing issues and to install anything new on machine x that I've added on machine y - dotfiles should be updated too - will probably have the script checkout a setup repo I'll use to store everything and then have the script pull if the repo is already there - will symlink dotfiles from the setup repo - sharing shell history in some way might be nice.. haven't looked into how that might be done yet though

For those that have already gone through this process, any recommendations? Any unexpected obstacles to getting something working? Any good publicly shared references for something like this?

edit: Claude provided the following in response to a similar question: ``` Yes! These are often called "dotfiles," "bootstrap scripts," or "system initialization scripts." Several notable developers and organizations maintain public versions. Here are some popular examples:

Popular Individual Dotfiles: Mathias Bynens' dotfiles - One of the most starred dotfiles repos Paul Irish's dotfiles - Frontend-focused setup Thoughtbot's laptop - Professional development company's setup holman/dotfiles - Organized by topic, very well structured Companies' Setup Scripts: Github's codespaces dotfiles Thoughtbot's dotfiles Tools/Frameworks: mac-dev-playbook - Ansible-based setup Homebrew Bundle - Brewfile approach mackup - Keep application settings in sync Dotfiles Managers: dotbot chezmoi yadm Resources to find more:

dotfiles.github.io - GitHub's guide to dotfiles awesome-dotfiles - Curated list of dotfiles resources ```

I'll check out the references later. Curious if anyone has some experience with any of the above that's worth sharing.