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Dotfiles management

This is my take on the "share your dotfiles" craze. Maybe it will be useful for you, too.

My first principles are:

  1. I have several files that I need available under $HOME, on a variety of machines.

  2. I'd like to use git to keep track of those files.

  3. I need separate "collections" of dotfiles, though, so that I can publish the ones that don't contain any private information or keys, and can keep the private information in repos that only I can access.

Principle #3, in particular, means that I can't (easily) just have my $HOME directory be a git repository.

Instead, the approach that I take is:

  • Any directory named $HOME/.dotfiles.* is assumed to be a git repository containing dotfiles that you want to track.

  • Within those repositories, any file or directory named *.symlink will be symlinked into $HOME, with the trailing .symlink removed. Any directory structure within the repositories will be maintained.

This repository contains a dotfiles script that takes care of installing and removing these symlinks for you. The intention is that it will be one (of several) dotfile repositories that dotfiles will manage. (That way the dotfiles script in this repository will be symlinked into $HOME/bin for you.)

The dotfiles script is written in straight-up Bourne shell, so it should work on any system with a working /bin/sh. (I.e., no dependencies on Ruby, Python, Make, or anything like that.)

Installation

To install the dotfiles script for the first time, do the following:

$ cd ~
$ git clone git://github.com/dcreager/dotfiles-base.git .dotfiles.base
$ .dotfiles.base/bin/dotfiles.symlink install

That should create a $HOME/bin/dotfiles symlink for you. From that point on, you can just run dotfiles from anywhere, assuming that $HOME/bin is in your PATH.

Usage

  • dotfiles install

    Recursively searches for any *.symlink file in any $HOME/.dotfiles.* directory, and symlinks them into $HOME. It will output the names of any new symlinks that are created.

    If any of the symlinks can't be created because there's already a (non-symlink) file with the same name, you'll get a "collision" warning, and that symlink won't be created. If you want to replace the existing regular file, delete it and then re-run dotfiles install.

  • dotfiles uninstall

    Unlinks the symlinks that dotfiles install creates. Just like with dotfiles install, we print out a collision warning if we expect to find a dotfiles-managed symlink but find a regular file instead.

    As a special case, we won't delete the symlink for the dotfiles script itself, since that would prevent you from being able to (easily) run the dotfiles script later. If you really want to completely remove all symlinks, set the FULL environment variable:

      $ FULL=1 dotfiles uninstall

  • dotfiles list

    Lists each of the symlink files in all of your dotfiles repositories, along with the location where the symlink for that file would be created.

  • dotfiles clean

    A more thorough version of dotfiles uninstall. The uninstall command only looks for symlinks that correspond to a *.symlink file in one of your dotfiles repositories. If you remove *.symlink file, then dotfiles uninstall won't know to delete the (now stale and dangling) symlink from $HOME. dotfiles clean will recursively look through the entire tree rooted under $HOME, looking for symlinks that point into a dotfiles repository, and deleting any symlink that points at a nonexistent file. This can take quite awhile if you've got a large home directory.

    An alternative is to use the following pattern:

      [ assuming you're in one of your dotfiles repositories ]
  $ dotfiles uninstall
  $ git rm <file to delete>
  $ dotfiles install

    This allows dotfiles uninstall to (quickly) remove the about-to-be-stale symlink while it's still around. Then you delete it, and reinstall everything that remains. (This is why the default for dotfiles uninstall is to not uninstall the dotfiles script itself.)

Additional repositories

As noted above, this repository only contains the dotfiles script itself. It might eventually might contain other scripts for handling these kinds of dotfile symlinks, but it doesn't contain any of my actual dotfiles. If you're using zsh and git, you might want to check out my actual collection of dotfiles, too. And if you're not, or if you don't like the choices I've made in configuring my system, you can create your own ~/.dotfiles.public repository and still use the dotfiles script to manage it.