These are my dotfiles. There are many like them, but these are mine.
I'm reinventing the wheel with this dotfile management solution. There are many tools that do what I need and much more. But that's just it. I want a tool that does exactly what I need and no more. I also relish the learning opportunity.
The bare git repo approach is indeed elegant, but I have two gripes. You have to use an alias instead of using the git command (like config diff); and it doesn't allow you to store a README in the repo directory. I don't want to clutter my home with helper files that are specific to dotfile management.
Dotbot was attractive--in fact, my solution is based on my cursory understanding of its philosophy--but I want to do things MY WAY dammit.
The essence of my solution is this. Load up dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/ with all of your dotfiles, named and organized exactly as you want them to appear relative to your actual home directory (aka ~/). Then install to create symlinks automatically.
Simply clone the repo and run the install script.
git clone https://github.com/taylorvance/dotfiles.git && ./dotfiles/install
This will create symlinks in your home directory for everything located in dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/ and configured in dotfiles/config. If there are any conflicts, your original files will be backed up in dotfiles/backups/.
Installation is idempotent, which is a word that dotfile authors love to flaunt.
- Place the dotfile in
dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/exactly as it should appear relative to your own home directory. In other words, pretenddotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/is~/.
|-- dotfiles
|-- home-away-from-HOME
|-- .my-whole-directory
| |-- file1.cfg
| |-- file2.cfg
|-- .vim
| |-- colors
| |-- mycolorscheme.vim
|-- .vimrc
- Add a line to
dotfiles/config. You can link specific files or whole directories.
.my-whole-directory
.vim/colors/mycolorscheme.vim
.vimrc
Use at your own risk. I encourage you to peruse the install script. It's like 30 lines of code.
|-- dotfiles
|-- README.md
|-- backups
| |-- 2020-01-08_04-08-15
| |-- .vimrc
|-- config
|-- home-away-from-HOME
| |-- .vim
| | |-- colors
| | |-- mycolorscheme.vim
| |-- .vimrc
|-- install
When you run the install script, there may be files in your home directory that would be overwritten by symlinking. Any file with the same name as one configured to be symlinked will be copied to dotfiles/backups/, in a subdirectory named after the current date/time.
dotfiles/config is a text file that tells the install script which files you want symlinked in your home directory. It works hand in hand with dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/. You can configure specific files or whole directories.
Enter the file's relative path from dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/. This will be the same path relative to ~/ after installation.
Example: .vim/colors/mycolorscheme.vim will link that file at ~/.vim/colors/mycolorscheme.vim while leaving the rest of ~/.vim intact.
Similar to specific files, enter the directory's relative path from dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/. Trailing slash is unnecessary.
Example: .my-whole-directory will link that directory and all of its contents (recursively) at ~/.my-whole-directory/.
NOTE: Any files that are in ~/.my-whole-directory/ but not in dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/.my-whole-directory/ will be backed up and removed during installation. If you wish to maintain untracked files in ~/.my-whole-directory/, you must configure specific files rather than the whole directory. Instead of .my-whole-directory, enter .my-whole-directory/file1.cfg and .my-whole-directory/file2.cfg, for example.
All of the content that is specific to my setup is in dotfiles/home-away-from-HOME/ and config. If you want to start fresh, empty out both of those and insert your own files.