Selfelected

Experimenting with setting up a new machine every third month

I am currently experimenting with using a virtual machine for my development. I have earlier done it through OSX/Win by the means of Parallells but now I am trying a Win/Win solution with Hyper-V.

Every 30 days or third month, I have seen both, is for how long the license is valid, I do a Hyper-V Manager->Quick create->Windows 10 dev environment and 30 minutes later, or so, the new VM is up and running.

Microsoft packages and delivers the new download on the very day of expiry so it is not possible to download a VM a day before and prep it.
It means the VM is out of date the moment you have installed the new one.

But there is a work around, open a console in admin and

and you have 90(?) new days. This can only be done once per VM.

Also note that the Hyper-V manager gui, as depicted below, does not refresh its “Create virtual-machine”-content so the date of the template might be old. Restart (the host machine?) to refresh it.

It comes with Visual studio, Visual studio code, Powershell 6 and some dotnet preinstalled. All I have to do is start VS and tell it to update itself..

Then I need Git, Notepad++, VSCode, Posh-git Keyboard1337 and BecerroInamovible. Ergo I need Chocolatey too.

Here is how I do it, the explained way

Fire up a console with elevated priveges.

Window-button, cmd, ctrl-shift-enter. Enter.

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Window-button, cmd, ctrl-shift-enter. Enter.

Install Chocolatey.

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@"%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))" && SET "PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin"

Restart console.

I have checked that all chocolatey packages I reference are “trusted package”. I cannot know if they packages remain “trusted package” at the time you are reading this. The choice is yours.

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Exit. Enter.

Window-button, cmd, ctrl-shift-enter. Enter.

Install Git.

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choco install git.install

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winget install --id Git.Git -e --source winget

Install Notepad++.

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choco install notepadplusplus.install

Install Posh-Git

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PowerShellGet\Install-Module posh-git -Scope CurrentUser -AllowPrerelease -Force

Add-PoshGitToProfile -AllHosts

To make it even cooler one can install more stuff, like oh-my-posh. For it to work one needs a new font “Cascadia Code”, and Windows terminal has to be updated to use it.

I like to have a clear separator by every promp. So I might add a newline before the prompt

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$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptBeforeSuffix.Text = '`n'

Install Powershell core

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choco install powershell-core

or

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winget install --name PowerShell --exact

Install Keyboard1337.

I believe Keyboard1337 is a zip if you git clone BecarroInamovible. If so, you don’t have to download Keyboard1337.

Otherwise download

. Unblock. Unpack. Install.
Run Keyboard 1337\l337\setup.exe (yupp. there’s a typo there)
Language preferences -> Keep English(Sweden) and English(United States). The latter is Keyboard1337

BecerroInamovible

It has a dependency on Autohotkey.

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choco install autohotkey

Copy contents of

to

As an alternative do ”

“

Selfelected1337

Not mentioned above, and not, yet, public I use the world’s first non-fixed programmer font called Selfelected1337.

Get it and install it.

Vscode

To make it work in VSCode. Open settings.json (ctrl-shift-p)settings.json

Update it with

“editor.fontFamily”: “Selfelected1337, Consolas, ‘Courier New’, monospace”,

To make the active tab stand out. Update settings.json with

“workbench.colorCustomizations”: {        “tab.activeBackground”: “#00aaff”    }

As short as possible:

@”%SystemRoot%\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe” -NoProfile -InputFormat None -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command “iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString(‘https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1’))” && SET “PATH=%PATH%;%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\chocolatey\bin”

choco install git.install -y & choco install notepadplusplus.install -y & choco install autohotkey -yt
choco install kubernetes-cli
winget install Microsoft.PowerShell
winget install “visual studio code”
winget install -e –id Microsoft.AzureCLI

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

Start a powershell terminal:

PowerShellGet\Install-Module posh-git -Scope CurrentUser ; Add-PoshGitToProfile -AllHosts

notepad $profile

And in the resulting file input

$GitPromptSettings.DefaultPromptPrefix.Text = ‘*** $(Get-Date -f “yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss”) `n’

Set-PSReadLineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function MenuComplete

In a powershell terminal:

mkdir c:\DATA ; mkdir c:\DATA\PROJEKT ; pushd c:\DATA\PROJEKT ; git clone https://github.com/LosManos/keyboard1337.git ;

& ‘C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\AutoHotkeyU64.exe’ C:\DATA\PROJEKT\keyboard1337\BecerroInamovible.ahk ;

Expand-Archive ‘C:\DATA\PROJEKT\keyboard1337\Keyboard 1337.zip’ -DestinationPath C:\DATA\PROJEKT\keyboard1337\ ; C:\DATA\PROJEKT\keyboard1337\l337\setup.exe

Keyboard 1337 – a better developer keyboard

I have created a better Windows keyboard layout for developers.  It is very similar to the US keyboard but with a few tweaks that makes it nicer to work with.  For a regular US keyboard user the only difference is less pressing of the shift key.

Download it here, of course as open source.

Longer story:

The US keyboard is a good working start for a better developer keyboard since most languages are created for the US layout.

Symbols often need shift to be pressed.
As developers we often press ( and ) and = and @ and the other symbols at the top row, but to reach them we need to press shift.  That is a total waste.  So I switched them.  With Keyboard 1337 you instead press shift to reach the figures.  Or use the num pad.

Alt-gr-\
Swedish developers have a problem with the keyboard layout.  For instance backslash “\” is reached through “alt-gr”, a button to the right of the space bar and then 7.  There is no good way to press those two buttons without hand gymnastics.  My solution is to switch to US layout.

ÅÄÖ
I need ÅÄÖ and instead of switching keyboard every time I need one of those letters I put them in their regular place but activated with alt-gr.  A solution that works better than it sounds.

Physics
The physical keyboard layout doesn’t change due to installing a new keyboard layout so you have to have a bit of fantasy or switch the plastic keys if possible.