13 ms·

Dotfiles Management

311 points by threeme3 4y ago

bennyp101 4y ago
Checkout chezmoi, I’ve been using it for a few years and it ticks every box for me - various machines, different configs, scripts, passwords etc https://www.chezmoi.io/ https://www.chezmoi.io/
- txprog 4y ago
  I discovered chezmoi a few days ago after getting a new laptop and a wish to normalize my configuration across multiple computers. Templating is awesome when having computers with differents DPI or screens attached, OS, etc. Edition with --watch is a breeze, auto commit too!
- pstuart 4y ago
  On my list of new years resolutions is to finally embrace dotfiles management. This looks like just the ticket. Thanks!
- theshrike79 4y ago
  And best of all: it's a single executable that doesn't need any specific installing.
- CamJN 4y ago
  I was interested in chezmoi, but they don't want you[1] managing files outside your home directory which made it a non-starter. I need to manage /etc/ and /usr/local/ too. [1] https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/#can-i-use-chezmoi-to-manage-files-outside-my-home-directory https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions...
  - saintfiends 4y ago
    I've been using chezmoi too and this is the only feature I miss. It'd be interesting to know what solutions folks are using. Chezmoi has some discussions around it, mostly recommending to use run scripts.
    - EnigmaCurry 4y ago
      I haven't needed to keep track of dotfiles per se, but for servers I need to track changes to /etc and for that I use Etckeeper[1] 1 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Etckeeper https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Etckeeper
    - twp 4y ago
      You can use chezmoi to manage files outside your home directory if you really want to. For an example, see https://github.com/felipecrs/dotfiles https://github.com/felipecrs/dotfiles: The `home` directory contains home directory files. The `root` directory contains root directory files (e.g `/etc`).
    - letmeinhere 4y ago
      I've partially adopted `aconfmgr` for the other stuff, but haven't put in the effort to refine my config, partly because I only have one applicable (arch-based) system at the moment.
    - k4j8 4y ago
      I didn't discover Chezmoi until seeing this thread (sigh). I developed a tool, filetailor, with an almost identical goal (dotfile management while accounting for differences across machines). It uses Python and YAML, but from what I can tell is similar in concept to Chezmoi. https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor One thing I like about filetailor I didn't see in Chezmoi was the ability to surround code with a comment specifying which machines it should be commented/uncommented for. It's easier than templates in some situations. It works great, but there's probably tons of bugs that occur when used by someone other than me. I don't have a CS background and this was my first big hobby project.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    I'm curious about, specifically, which files you (and the sibling commenter) want to manage outside of the home directory. Is it OS package-manager configs? This is highly dependent on distro, but for any use-cases where editing /etc/ is the recommendation, I have found that either: (a) It's a development environment thing (e.g. httpd vhosts) & thus I see it as quite separate to "my dotfiles" (a personal machine env thing): I try my best to manage dev env stuff from project-specific repos wherever I can (i.e. a bash script to dispatch required local /etc/ changes in a repo "./scripts" dir or similar), or otherwise if it's a more significant set of configs, Ansible. (b) It's a specific app that is recommending doing things the "Wrong Way™". There's often a workaround to get it to use $HOME or $XDG. (c) It's OS package configs. I've found that things like repo & key installs are well suited to chezmoi run_ scripts. For anything more advanced or esoteric, I guess that may be an exception.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      On macOS I often have the need to place stuff in /Library.
      - theshrike79 4y ago
        What kind of stuff? I'm genuinely curious, as I've never once had to touch /Library manually.
        saagarjha 4y ago
        Launch Daemons, mostly
      - lucideer 4y ago
        these go in ~/Library/LaunchAgents
        saagarjha 4y ago
        Not if they need to run as root
    - 4y ago
  - eviks 4y ago
    they don't want you, but they also "allow you, in theory, to use chezmoi to manage any file in your filesystem, "
- Barrin92 4y ago
  settled on this as well because of its very good cross-platform support. Only thing that took some time getting used to was the model of having a source directory distinct from your actual dotfiles unlike most of the symlink based tools.
  - twp 4y ago
    Fair point. If you're interested in why chezmoi took this particular approach, I wrote a few FAQs on its design: Why chezmoi doesn't use symlinks: https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/#why-doesnt-chezmoi-use-symlinks-like-gnu-stow https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions... General design FAQs: https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions...
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      That's honestly very helpful. I wasn't aware of edit.watch which is pretty much what I wanted.
- snapsnail 4y ago
  I'm in the process of migrating over to this. I find it much simpler and easier to configure than dotbot (which I had be using for many years). If you're only using your dotfiles on one platform, really anything will work. Where things get hairy is when you want slight tweaks or configuration changes depending on platform. Chezmoi gets this right out of the box.
- wkdneidbwf 4y ago
  been using chezmoi for the past 3 months across 4 machines. i like the template support, but i constantly feel like there's complexity hiding. im finding myself needing to relearn various bits of how it works after not touching it for a few weeks at a time. by far, my favorite thing about chezmoi is that you're managing a separate set of files and syncing then to your homedir, making it reallllllly easy to switch tools or otherwise do something else. its better than the home-rolled symlink solution i was using before it, and certainly better than some of these turn-your-home-dir-into-a-git-repo solutions. but if im being honest, i hate every one of these tools in different ways. i dont have the answer, but i feel like im endlessly searching for something that feels like the right balance of simple and flexible. anybody wanna join my dotfiles-aas startup?
  - k4j8 4y ago
    My homebrew solution uses comments surrounding or in-line with the code that is machine-specific. The program then uncomments/comments the code appropriately as it is backed up and restored. What do you think of this approach? Would that remove the complexity hiding?
    - wkdneidbwf 4y ago
      i'd have to see it to have much of an opinion. have a GitHub link by chance?
      - k4j8 4y ago
        See the example usage via the link below. https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor#example-usage https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor#example-usage The program works great for my use case, but I don't have a CS background and this was my first big project, so I'm sure it's full of bugs and poor coding practices.
watusername 4y ago
Nice hack, but I still believe that home-manager [0] should be the way to go. It's the gateway drug to the Nix ecosystem and cleanly solves the composability problem which this "one-size-fits-all repo checked out to root" approach will have some trouble with. [0] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  It's definitely a gateway drug worth taking since Nix solves all kinds of other problems too. Just don't expect to become an expert overnight, it takes a while to sink in (or it did for me).
  - unshavedyak 4y ago
    It's sad though - there's almost nothing in Nix (in my experience) that has to be that difficult if you know any programming. It's a perfect storm of bad documentation, bad tooling and unintuitive UX. I've been half tempted to try and bridge Nix with some simplified UX. Something resembling blasphemy but nonetheless focused on user experience above all else. At least doing that would be a natural project to learn Nix better, too heh. (disclaimer: I use Nix[OS] on two machines and my macbook. I know it decently.. but far from where i'd expect given it's my primary OS and package manager)
    - woile 4y ago
      I've just (literally a few hours ago) started a tool trying to follow those principles. https://github.com/woile/npt https://github.com/woile/npt I still don't know if it's worth, I have to experiment a bit more with it. I have to say I'm still struggling with the flake:/
    - colordrops 4y ago
      https://snowflakeos.org/ https://snowflakeos.org/
      - deleted 4y ago
fileeditview 4y ago
I also use this trick to manage my dotfiles. Here is another good tutorial about it: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles
SuperCuber 4y ago
I was unhappy with existing solutions, especially I wanted the ability to handle differences between machines. So I built my own! You're welcome to see if you like it :) https://github.com/SuperCuber/dotter https://github.com/SuperCuber/dotter
- l00sed 4y ago
  I've been using dotter for over a year and it's incredible. I use the same dotfiles repo for Mac and Linux, and dotter is super easy to change variables or subscribe a machine to specific configs. Thanks a lot for dotter @Supercuber!
g0xA52A2A 4y ago
I'm a fan of just having my $HOME as a plain git repo with "*" in ~/.gitignore. Having to force add new files is a minor chore but one I'm more than happy to live with.
- echelon 4y ago
  That's clever, but it also seems like a bit of a hassle. It also seems incredibly non-hermetic and prone to accidental pollution. What about putting all configs into a single git managed directory and using tooling to install the appropriate symlinks?
  - hermanradtke 4y ago
    The git ignore file set up prevents accidental pollution. A script and/or symlinks is overhead.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    # Save the repo to `~/.dotfiles`; the `--bare` option prevents Git from making # a mess of your home directory. git clone --bare ... ~/.dotfiles # Set up an alias for this shell session (it's also in ~/.config/aliasrc). alias dots='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME' # Make sure we don't show untracked files in `git status` output. dots config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no # Checkout all local files. # NOTE: This might overwrite existing files, or you might need to stash files # before proceeding. Look before you leap. If you have an existing setup, # consider checking out individual files as needed and testing the # configuration piecemeal, instead of doing a complete checkout. dots checkout # Make sure we can access remotes properly. The `--bare` option requires us to # do this manually. dots config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" # Make sure we are set up to track the remote `master` branch. Again, this is a # consequence of cloning with `--bare`. dots branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master dots switch master # Fetch to make sure everything is configured correctly. dots fetch origin
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  "yadm" effectively does this, just replace "git" with "yadm" and it'll act on your $HOME Has a couple of other nice things specific to this use case, like letting you have slightly different files based on username or platform. https://yadm.io/ https://yadm.io/
tomphoolery 4y ago
I also track my dotfiles in a Git repo, but I only track my home directory. Made a tool to help out with some of the more arcane commands: https://github.com/tubbo/homer https://github.com/tubbo/homer. I'm currently rewriting it in Rust, which is mostly done but I still have to work out a couple kinks on Linux machines . So far, I haven't needed to mess with too many top-level configs on each machine, most of the stuff I do is relatively contained (and uses the XDG standards thankfully). It got a little hairy when I tried to configure certain file paths on both a Linux and macOS environment, as there are different default conventions and other nuances that make the two not fully compatible at times. But it definitely saves a lot of time when setting up a new machine from scratch, `homer bootstrap $REPO_URL` does all the hard work and gets my home directory loaded up with configuration the way I'd expect.
j1elo 4y ago
In case it's useful for someone (xkcd.com/1053) I use stow for handling config files. Lastly featured in HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018 It does however need a bit of preparation for complex things like Electron-based apps. I don't want to stow non-essential files and dirs, so I ended complementing it with a small script to do some preparation before the stowing itself.
chadlavi 4y ago
I used to put a lot of effort into trying to sync dot files. And you know what? I don't see a reason to do it. I only have one work computer and one personal computer.
- jonwest 4y ago
  What happens when one of those computers blows up and you need to get back to being productive quickly?
  - doubleunplussed 4y ago
    Not the person you asked, but if that happens I restore from backup.
  - chadlavi 4y ago
    I don't need to sync between computers to accomplish that. Could just use something as simple as Dropbox. BUT ALSO: There's nothing that important in my personal dot files. And anything work related is in specific git repos. I could be productive with the default zsh on a fresh install of macOS by installing home brew and a few packages. I also haven't had a mac "blow up" in... 20 years?
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  I used to run several VMs for several projects, and it was convenient. But now I really just have a single work project, and don't really code on my personal computer. So I no longer need it.
jonwest 4y ago
Dotbot (https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot) has worked extremely well for me. It’s simple to setup, has minimal dependencies, and it is also easy to run arbitrary commands if I want to get tricky with things. I would highly recommend it.
- davidhay 4y ago
  Second dotbot.
masto 4y ago
I very recently put some effort into tidying up my dotfiles, and have a brief writeup at https://chatwithsysop.com/blog/2022/12/31/dotfiles-cleanup https://chatwithsysop.com/blog/2022/12/31/dotfiles-cleanup (none of this was done with the academic rigor required to withstand a deconstruction by HN, it is just a log of one person's experience with a weekend project). I chose to use yadm (http://yadm.io http://yadm.io) for no particular reasons beyond that I found it first, and it seemed reasonable. It's more just a wrapper around putting GIT_DIR elsewhere.
- ericvsmith 4y ago
  I can't say enough good things about yadm. I found a yadm bug under Cygwin years ago, and the author had a patch for me within a day. I'll grant that Cygwin is an odd platform. I use yadm to manage dotfiles across Windows (via Cygwin), macOS, and Linux.
Karellen 4y ago
~/.dotfiles Really? Just as so many utilities are finally moving away from `~/.foo` to `$XDG_CONFIG_DIR/foo` (default `~/.config/foo`) to reduce home directory pollution, does a new tool have to start using `~/.foo`? Heck, even the `dot` output demo'd by TFA shows 8 legacy `~/.foo` files, but 10 `~/.config/foo(/bar)*` files. (But is missing `~/.dotfiles`?!)
- jacobsenscott 4y ago
  This isn't a new tool. It is just a single convenient shell alias for any file on the system with git. You can put the repo in $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/dotfiles or wherever you want. ~/.dotfiles is just a common place to put that repo.
leipert 4y ago
How do people here handle secrets like e.g. passwords / env variables / ssh keys in their dotfiles? I've written simple encrypt/decrypt with PGP, but since I've kinda lost trust into Keybase I have no simple way to bootstrap PGP.
- base698 4y ago
  Pass: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pass https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pass Emacs uses .authinfo transparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7jhcq8/authinfogpg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7jhcq8/authinfogpg/
  - spudlyo 4y ago
    Emacs' auth-source.el can work directly with the macOS keychain, which if you're on a Mac is pretty useful.
- twp 4y ago
  https://www.chezmoi.io/ https://www.chezmoi.io/ supports: * Keeping secrets in your password manager (all major password managers are supported), see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/password-managers/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/password-managers/. * Encrypting entire files with gpg or age, see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/encryption/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/encryption/. You can also bootstrap your gpg/age private key on a new machine with a passphrase, see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/encryption/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions....
- nverno 4y ago
  I do the same, just copy .gnupg folder over via ssh / usb / yubikey.
- nirvdrum 4y ago
  I use git-crypt with VCSH for dotfiles and Ansible for provisioning, using Ansible's built-in encryption for some data. It works pretty well, but to make things less annoying, I prompt for decrypt passwords up front and if typo it, you won't know until much later when bringing a machine up from scratch.
_0xdd 4y ago
I'm a BSD user, so I tend to gravitate towards using rcs. Took a little while to get the muscle memory down, but it does work well for keeping track of my dotfiles.
neeh0 4y ago
nix home-manager is really great at this (and declarative!)
djhworld 4y ago
I always start out with the best of intentions for dotfile mangement etc, using tools like stow, git and so on. Eventually I get lazy and don't bother checking stuff in and forget where half of the stuff is. Might try this solution but I'm too cynical to think it'll be something I'll stick with
- dewey 4y ago
  Exactly the same for me, at some point I realized that just copying over some config files from a backup is easier than trying to keep things neat and tidy for years just to be prepared for setting up a new computer every few years.
  - layer8 4y ago
    It’s more for when you change a setting, that you don’t have to manually change it on n accounts/machines.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I often think I need to have weekly backups done for me so I can skip managing at times without accumulating too much untracked cruft.
- sudhirkhanger 4y ago
  It's useful if you have a second machine or even work machine where you want to keep your bash profile, IDE settings, etc. in sync.
gillh 4y ago
At our startup (FluxNinja), we provide MacBooks and Linux Desktops (System76) to our engineering staff. We have invested in common dotfiles[0] to help them keep dev experience consistent across machines. We use chezmoi for dotfiles management. Really recommend investing in common dotfiles at the organization level. For young developers, a standard setup provides a big productivity boost. [0] https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles
- firstSpeaker 4y ago
  Interesting, thanks for sharing. Two questions: Does this make a backup of an existing set of .files? Does this also install required packages using brew?
  - gillh 4y ago
    1. It doesn't do a good job in making a backup of existing files as it's meant to be setup on a new machine. However, the setup script can be quickly modified to backup existing files. See [0]. 2. Yes, it installs required packages via brew both on macOS and Linux. See [1]. [0] https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/assets/executable_install.sh https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/assets/... [1] https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/bin/executable_sync_brews.sh https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/bin/exe...
- sudhirkhanger 4y ago
  How is Chezmoi compared to Stow? Currently using Stow but Chezmoi seems to be interesting.
- pprotas 4y ago
  Is the usage of these standard dotfiles required for all developers? Personally I would always prefer to use my own dotfiles at work
prima-facie 4y ago
I use something similar but call it cfg: https://gist.github.com/radupotop/c1d2b77c24ddfcfae93d840f51e90b1d https://gist.github.com/radupotop/c1d2b77c24ddfcfae93d840f51... Each local user has its own branch so this works: cfg push -u origin $USER It's limited to the $HOME config files only, /etc has a separate git repo.
ckolkey 4y ago
This isnt a vcs based solution, but I've been using syncthing to track my configs, with the help of a small home server. The bonus is that it automatically synchronises my work and personal laptops without me needing to do anything
jsmeaton 4y ago
I moved away from using a dotfiles repo a few years ago because I kept forgetting to add/commit files as I changed them. Instead I use mackup[0] which automatically manages symlinks to your Dropbox/Drive/Share and has support for a huge amount of software by default. You can also manually add “extra” files you wish to track if you like. [0] https://github.com/lra/mackup https://github.com/lra/mackup
snhly 4y ago
I have a similar system: I manage my dot files and a bunch of other configs by placing a git repository in my operating system's root directory, i.e. file:///.git. I use a .gitignore file to exclude most things from consideration while adding things to git. Transferring to another OS is as simple as copying the .git dir over.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Before your comment I never considered the inverse of .gitignore but apparently it’s very easy to do! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/987142/make-gitignore-ignore-everything-except-a-few-files https://stackoverflow.com/questions/987142/make-gitignore-ig...
  - snhly 4y ago
    This is cool, but I actually place ignored paths into the gitignore manually. This way I will always see reminders when a new file needs to be tracked or ignored. Otherwise I would forget to track new config files. E.g. when a new program is installed, its binary will be ignored by a previous rule added to gitignore (/use/bin/*), but its newly created config files in /etc will come up red when I run `git status`.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
andersonvaz 4y ago
YADM[0] is another great tool for this very purpose which I've been using for years in combination with homebrew to setup any new (Mac) machine that I get and have everything from dotfiles to Applications installed in no time. [0] https://yadm.io https://yadm.io
asix66 4y ago
Looks similar to what I’m doing to manage my dotfiles [0] I’ll be refreshing this thread to see what others are using. [0] https://github.com/andersix/dotfiles https://github.com/andersix/dotfiles
pyrophane 4y ago
I do something similar, albeit a bit more bare-bones. I keep my dotfiles in a dotfiles folder that is a git repo and then just have a simple script to symlink everything. I have a couple of submodules in there (zplug, pyenv) and a bash script to keep them up to date, and then a few self managed binaries, like fnm. That's about it. I don't bother trying to manage anything outside of home or deal with secret values by using something like git-secret. Overall, it works great and has allowed me to keep track of how my core tools are configured without too much hassle.
- timetraveller26 4y ago
  Stow (https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) may be useful for the linking part
  - auraham 4y ago
    Related: Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018
- justaj 4y ago
  I use Homeshick for this, which also allows me to have multiple repos: https://github.com/andsens/homeshick https://github.com/andsens/homeshick
- pprotas 4y ago
  This is exactly my setup. Add onto this a simple install script and you have an easy way to quickly provision (is that the right word?) a new laptop. Mine uses Homebrew to install my favorite binaries and also runs a zsh script to configure macOS defaults how I like it.
- Oxidation 4y ago
  Chezmoi[1] has been working well for me recently, replacing a set of Stow-able directories in a simple Git repo. I haven't started using templates and things, for now it's just environment variables. [1]: https://chezmoi.io https://chezmoi.io
andrewla 4y ago
As more applications migrate to xdg, I have simply taken to having my .config directory be a git repository. Inside that directory I have a “dotfiles” subdirectory that has managed versions of my home directory dotfiles which I symlink in.
- blueflow 4y ago
  This is the obvious no-code solution that adds no extra maintenance burden to anyone. And it works with any VCS or tarballs. I've been using git and tarballs to synchronize my ~/.config across half a dozen hosts.
cassepipe 4y ago
I previously found the same idea there : https://github.com/Snaipe/dot-git https://github.com/Snaipe/dot-git
bxfhjcvu 4y ago
Hourly snapshots for history. I hardly ever need to sync things between machines since vscode manages that itself. I get why some people need this but it's a net time sync for a lot of people that probably don't need it. Willing to bet it's mostly due to a lack of backups and ability to restore them to a new machine when you upgrade. One nice thing about this is that you can keep a central repo for multiple machines and use branches with rebase and merge to sync changes while keeping specific differences separate.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
redraw 4y ago
I did something similar here https://github.com/redraw/dotfiles https://github.com/redraw/dotfiles, along with some installation scripts although, nice idea on tracking the whole / instead of just ~/! the only thing I miss after aliasing dotfiles to git, is that you lose git's autocompletion features. I once tried to set it up in zsh with autocomp, but without success, should review that
drexlspivey 4y ago
From this HN comment from 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754 I use: git init --bare $HOME/.myconf alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME' config config status.showUntrackedFiles no where my ~/.myconf directory is a git bare repository. Then any file within the home folder can be versioned with normal commands like: config status config add .vimrc config commit -m "Add vimrc" config add .config/redshift.conf config commit -m "Add redshift config" config push And so one… No extra tooling, no symlinks, files are tracked on a version control system, you can use different branches for different computers, you can replicate you configuration easily on new installation.
wadkar 4y ago
Is there a name for oft-repeating content/post and the overall discussion on a given topic (dotfile management in this case) on HN? I am not complaining about the repeat. It’s just that I find it very amusing to see different people kinda-sorta reinventing the wheel (and discussing the nuts and bolts) again.
res0nat0r 4y ago
I just use yadm: https://yadm.io/ https://yadm.io/
palijer 4y ago
I've been using this which is pretty rad https://github.com/cszatmary/dot https://github.com/cszatmary/dot
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
DavideNL 4y ago
A similar post on HN: - "The best way to store your dotfiles: A bare Git repository" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591033 - Also see: "The best way to store your dotfiles: A bare Git repository EXPLAINED" : https://www.ackama.com/what-we-think/the-best-way-to-store-your-dotfiles-a-bare-git-repository-explained/ https://www.ackama.com/what-we-think/the-best-way-to-store-y...
Touche 4y ago
The biggest pain point I have with dotfile management is that none of my computers are exactly the same, so if I start pulling dotfiles from a repo I get unwanted configuration on a machine. It could be something as simple as a Vim theme not looking right on another computer because it's using a different terminal. I guess what I should be doing is adding if statements into all of my config files, but instead I wind up just copy/pasting the parts of config that I like from my github repo and never actually doing real dotfile management. Which just leads to the repo becoming stale.
sontek 4y ago
I see a lot of people mentioning home-manager / nix in the comments. I tried drinking the nix kool-aid and home-manager and all that was a little too much more me and landed on a hybrid approach: https://github.com/sontek/homies https://github.com/sontek/homies 1. I use a `justfile` that calls `nix profile install ...` to install my packages, rather than using a nix configuration file. This allows me to use a standard package manager workflow rather than going "all in". https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L24-L29 https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L24-L2... 2. I then use GNU Stow to install my dotfile configuration: https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L93-L98 https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L93-L9... I think this is a great middle ground where I can utilize `nix` as my package manager across Linux and Mac and have consistency while not having to learn the whole configuration language or change my workflow. The other tools I use heavily in my environment: - https://asdf-vm.com/ https://asdf-vm.com/: I find this better than installing python/node/etc from nix. - https://github.com/casey/just https://github.com/casey/just: I use this as my command runner (similar to make but cleaner in my opinion)
theknarf 4y ago
I found that most tooling was overkill and now just use a single <100 Bash script [0]. [0] https://github.com/TheKnarf/configs/blob/master/setup https://github.com/TheKnarf/configs/blob/master/setup
npteljes 4y ago
I personally value Out Of Box Experience, and so, my personalization is more like installing software, instead of tweaking them. So I back up my /home, and on a new system, I just look at the backup, if I need settings for a program.
mattpallissard 4y ago
Cool, but I don't need everything versioned and I like it simple. ~/usr/src/p/dotfiles git worktree list /home/matt/usr/src/p/dotfiles 160721b5e3 [master] /home/matt/.config e195a59c7b [config] /home/matt/.gnupg b50725b47c [gnupg] /home/matt/.mozilla b5d0d07b74 [mozilla] /home/matt/.mutt f3d4a14d99 [mutt] /home/matt/.tmux a93aa509af [tmux] /home/matt/.vim 68fd61921c [vim] /home/matt/.weechat ef3d4c761f [weechat] /home/matt/.zsh 228ee42367 [zsh] /home/matt/bin b05de7d9d7 [bin] /home/matt/usr/venvs/shell 6a3b7e4c6a [shell/venv] /home/matt/usr/venvs/npm d2065c68bf [shell/npm] And only two symlinks I manually manage /home/matt/.vimrc -> .vim/.vimrc /home/matt/.zshrc -> .zsh/zshrc Everything else isn't versioned. I rely on btrfs snapshots and back ups.
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
That's nice, i just dump them in a GH repo. I get a backup too :)
GrqP 4y ago
Does this approach work with submodules? The reason I ask is because some of my configs rely on configs from other repos.

311 points by threeme3 4y ago

Checkout chezmoi, I’ve been using it for a few years and it ticks every box for me - various machines, different configs, scripts, passwords etc https://www.chezmoi.io/ https://www.chezmoi.io/

txprog 4y ago
I discovered chezmoi a few days ago after getting a new laptop and a wish to normalize my configuration across multiple computers. Templating is awesome when having computers with differents DPI or screens attached, OS, etc. Edition with --watch is a breeze, auto commit too!
pstuart 4y ago
On my list of new years resolutions is to finally embrace dotfiles management. This looks like just the ticket. Thanks!
theshrike79 4y ago
And best of all: it's a single executable that doesn't need any specific installing.
CamJN 4y ago
I was interested in chezmoi, but they don't want you[1] managing files outside your home directory which made it a non-starter. I need to manage /etc/ and /usr/local/ too. [1] https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/#can-i-use-chezmoi-to-manage-files-outside-my-home-directory https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions...
- saintfiends 4y ago
  I've been using chezmoi too and this is the only feature I miss. It'd be interesting to know what solutions folks are using. Chezmoi has some discussions around it, mostly recommending to use run scripts.
  - EnigmaCurry 4y ago
    I haven't needed to keep track of dotfiles per se, but for servers I need to track changes to /etc and for that I use Etckeeper[1] 1 https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Etckeeper https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Etckeeper
  - twp 4y ago
    You can use chezmoi to manage files outside your home directory if you really want to. For an example, see https://github.com/felipecrs/dotfiles https://github.com/felipecrs/dotfiles: The `home` directory contains home directory files. The `root` directory contains root directory files (e.g `/etc`).
  - letmeinhere 4y ago
    I've partially adopted `aconfmgr` for the other stuff, but haven't put in the effort to refine my config, partly because I only have one applicable (arch-based) system at the moment.
  - k4j8 4y ago
    I didn't discover Chezmoi until seeing this thread (sigh). I developed a tool, filetailor, with an almost identical goal (dotfile management while accounting for differences across machines). It uses Python and YAML, but from what I can tell is similar in concept to Chezmoi. https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor One thing I like about filetailor I didn't see in Chezmoi was the ability to surround code with a comment specifying which machines it should be commented/uncommented for. It's easier than templates in some situations. It works great, but there's probably tons of bugs that occur when used by someone other than me. I don't have a CS background and this was my first big hobby project.
- lucideer 4y ago
  I'm curious about, specifically, which files you (and the sibling commenter) want to manage outside of the home directory. Is it OS package-manager configs? This is highly dependent on distro, but for any use-cases where editing /etc/ is the recommendation, I have found that either: (a) It's a development environment thing (e.g. httpd vhosts) & thus I see it as quite separate to "my dotfiles" (a personal machine env thing): I try my best to manage dev env stuff from project-specific repos wherever I can (i.e. a bash script to dispatch required local /etc/ changes in a repo "./scripts" dir or similar), or otherwise if it's a more significant set of configs, Ansible. (b) It's a specific app that is recommending doing things the "Wrong Way™". There's often a workaround to get it to use $HOME or $XDG. (c) It's OS package configs. I've found that things like repo & key installs are well suited to chezmoi run_ scripts. For anything more advanced or esoteric, I guess that may be an exception.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    On macOS I often have the need to place stuff in /Library.
    - theshrike79 4y ago
      What kind of stuff? I'm genuinely curious, as I've never once had to touch /Library manually.
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        Launch Daemons, mostly
    - lucideer 4y ago
      these go in ~/Library/LaunchAgents
      - saagarjha 4y ago
        Not if they need to run as root
  - 4y ago
- eviks 4y ago
  they don't want you, but they also "allow you, in theory, to use chezmoi to manage any file in your filesystem, "
Barrin92 4y ago
settled on this as well because of its very good cross-platform support. Only thing that took some time getting used to was the model of having a source directory distinct from your actual dotfiles unlike most of the symlink based tools.
- twp 4y ago
  Fair point. If you're interested in why chezmoi took this particular approach, I wrote a few FAQs on its design: Why chezmoi doesn't use symlinks: https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/#why-doesnt-chezmoi-use-symlinks-like-gnu-stow https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions... General design FAQs: https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/design/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions...
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    That's honestly very helpful. I wasn't aware of edit.watch which is pretty much what I wanted.
snapsnail 4y ago
I'm in the process of migrating over to this. I find it much simpler and easier to configure than dotbot (which I had be using for many years). If you're only using your dotfiles on one platform, really anything will work. Where things get hairy is when you want slight tweaks or configuration changes depending on platform. Chezmoi gets this right out of the box.
wkdneidbwf 4y ago
been using chezmoi for the past 3 months across 4 machines. i like the template support, but i constantly feel like there's complexity hiding. im finding myself needing to relearn various bits of how it works after not touching it for a few weeks at a time. by far, my favorite thing about chezmoi is that you're managing a separate set of files and syncing then to your homedir, making it reallllllly easy to switch tools or otherwise do something else. its better than the home-rolled symlink solution i was using before it, and certainly better than some of these turn-your-home-dir-into-a-git-repo solutions. but if im being honest, i hate every one of these tools in different ways. i dont have the answer, but i feel like im endlessly searching for something that feels like the right balance of simple and flexible. anybody wanna join my dotfiles-aas startup?
- k4j8 4y ago
  My homebrew solution uses comments surrounding or in-line with the code that is machine-specific. The program then uncomments/comments the code appropriately as it is backed up and restored. What do you think of this approach? Would that remove the complexity hiding?
  - wkdneidbwf 4y ago
    i'd have to see it to have much of an opinion. have a GitHub link by chance?
    - k4j8 4y ago
      See the example usage via the link below. https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor#example-usage https://github.com/k4j8/filetailor#example-usage The program works great for my use case, but I don't have a CS background and this was my first big project, so I'm sure it's full of bugs and poor coding practices.

watusername 4y ago

Nice hack, but I still believe that home-manager [0] should be the way to go. It's the gateway drug to the Nix ecosystem and cleanly solves the composability problem which this "one-size-fits-all repo checked out to root" approach will have some trouble with. [0] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
It's definitely a gateway drug worth taking since Nix solves all kinds of other problems too. Just don't expect to become an expert overnight, it takes a while to sink in (or it did for me).
- unshavedyak 4y ago
  It's sad though - there's almost nothing in Nix (in my experience) that has to be that difficult if you know any programming. It's a perfect storm of bad documentation, bad tooling and unintuitive UX. I've been half tempted to try and bridge Nix with some simplified UX. Something resembling blasphemy but nonetheless focused on user experience above all else. At least doing that would be a natural project to learn Nix better, too heh. (disclaimer: I use Nix[OS] on two machines and my macbook. I know it decently.. but far from where i'd expect given it's my primary OS and package manager)
  - woile 4y ago
    I've just (literally a few hours ago) started a tool trying to follow those principles. https://github.com/woile/npt https://github.com/woile/npt I still don't know if it's worth, I have to experiment a bit more with it. I have to say I'm still struggling with the flake:/
  - colordrops 4y ago
    https://snowflakeos.org/ https://snowflakeos.org/
    - deleted 4y ago

fileeditview 4y ago

I also use this trick to manage my dotfiles. Here is another good tutorial about it: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles

SuperCuber 4y ago

I was unhappy with existing solutions, especially I wanted the ability to handle differences between machines. So I built my own! You're welcome to see if you like it :) https://github.com/SuperCuber/dotter https://github.com/SuperCuber/dotter

l00sed 4y ago
I've been using dotter for over a year and it's incredible. I use the same dotfiles repo for Mac and Linux, and dotter is super easy to change variables or subscribe a machine to specific configs. Thanks a lot for dotter @Supercuber!

g0xA52A2A 4y ago

I'm a fan of just having my $HOME as a plain git repo with "*" in ~/.gitignore. Having to force add new files is a minor chore but one I'm more than happy to live with.

echelon 4y ago
That's clever, but it also seems like a bit of a hassle. It also seems incredibly non-hermetic and prone to accidental pollution. What about putting all configs into a single git managed directory and using tooling to install the appropriate symlinks?
- hermanradtke 4y ago
  The git ignore file set up prevents accidental pollution. A script and/or symlinks is overhead.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  # Save the repo to `~/.dotfiles`; the `--bare` option prevents Git from making # a mess of your home directory. git clone --bare ... ~/.dotfiles # Set up an alias for this shell session (it's also in ~/.config/aliasrc). alias dots='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME' # Make sure we don't show untracked files in `git status` output. dots config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no # Checkout all local files. # NOTE: This might overwrite existing files, or you might need to stash files # before proceeding. Look before you leap. If you have an existing setup, # consider checking out individual files as needed and testing the # configuration piecemeal, instead of doing a complete checkout. dots checkout # Make sure we can access remotes properly. The `--bare` option requires us to # do this manually. dots config remote.origin.fetch "+refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*" # Make sure we are set up to track the remote `master` branch. Again, this is a # consequence of cloning with `--bare`. dots branch --set-upstream-to=origin/master master dots switch master # Fetch to make sure everything is configured correctly. dots fetch origin
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
"yadm" effectively does this, just replace "git" with "yadm" and it'll act on your $HOME Has a couple of other nice things specific to this use case, like letting you have slightly different files based on username or platform. https://yadm.io/ https://yadm.io/

tomphoolery 4y ago

I also track my dotfiles in a Git repo, but I only track my home directory. Made a tool to help out with some of the more arcane commands: https://github.com/tubbo/homer https://github.com/tubbo/homer. I'm currently rewriting it in Rust, which is mostly done but I still have to work out a couple kinks on Linux machines . So far, I haven't needed to mess with too many top-level configs on each machine, most of the stuff I do is relatively contained (and uses the XDG standards thankfully). It got a little hairy when I tried to configure certain file paths on both a Linux and macOS environment, as there are different default conventions and other nuances that make the two not fully compatible at times. But it definitely saves a lot of time when setting up a new machine from scratch, `homer bootstrap $REPO_URL` does all the hard work and gets my home directory loaded up with configuration the way I'd expect.

j1elo 4y ago

In case it's useful for someone (xkcd.com/1053) I use stow for handling config files. Lastly featured in HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018 It does however need a bit of preparation for complex things like Electron-based apps. I don't want to stow non-essential files and dirs, so I ended complementing it with a small script to do some preparation before the stowing itself.

chadlavi 4y ago

I used to put a lot of effort into trying to sync dot files. And you know what? I don't see a reason to do it. I only have one work computer and one personal computer.

jonwest 4y ago
What happens when one of those computers blows up and you need to get back to being productive quickly?
- doubleunplussed 4y ago
  Not the person you asked, but if that happens I restore from backup.
- chadlavi 4y ago
  I don't need to sync between computers to accomplish that. Could just use something as simple as Dropbox. BUT ALSO: There's nothing that important in my personal dot files. And anything work related is in specific git repos. I could be productive with the default zsh on a fresh install of macOS by installing home brew and a few packages. I also haven't had a mac "blow up" in... 20 years?
jacobsenscott 4y ago
I used to run several VMs for several projects, and it was convenient. But now I really just have a single work project, and don't really code on my personal computer. So I no longer need it.

jonwest 4y ago

Dotbot (https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot https://github.com/anishathalye/dotbot) has worked extremely well for me. It’s simple to setup, has minimal dependencies, and it is also easy to run arbitrary commands if I want to get tricky with things. I would highly recommend it.

davidhay 4y ago
Second dotbot.

masto 4y ago

I very recently put some effort into tidying up my dotfiles, and have a brief writeup at https://chatwithsysop.com/blog/2022/12/31/dotfiles-cleanup https://chatwithsysop.com/blog/2022/12/31/dotfiles-cleanup (none of this was done with the academic rigor required to withstand a deconstruction by HN, it is just a log of one person's experience with a weekend project). I chose to use yadm (http://yadm.io http://yadm.io) for no particular reasons beyond that I found it first, and it seemed reasonable. It's more just a wrapper around putting GIT_DIR elsewhere.

ericvsmith 4y ago
I can't say enough good things about yadm. I found a yadm bug under Cygwin years ago, and the author had a patch for me within a day. I'll grant that Cygwin is an odd platform. I use yadm to manage dotfiles across Windows (via Cygwin), macOS, and Linux.

Karellen 4y ago

~/.dotfiles Really? Just as so many utilities are finally moving away from `~/.foo` to `$XDG_CONFIG_DIR/foo` (default `~/.config/foo`) to reduce home directory pollution, does a new tool have to start using `~/.foo`? Heck, even the `dot` output demo'd by TFA shows 8 legacy `~/.foo` files, but 10 `~/.config/foo(/bar)*` files. (But is missing `~/.dotfiles`?!)

jacobsenscott 4y ago
This isn't a new tool. It is just a single convenient shell alias for any file on the system with git. You can put the repo in $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/dotfiles or wherever you want. ~/.dotfiles is just a common place to put that repo.

leipert 4y ago

How do people here handle secrets like e.g. passwords / env variables / ssh keys in their dotfiles? I've written simple encrypt/decrypt with PGP, but since I've kinda lost trust into Keybase I have no simple way to bootstrap PGP.

base698 4y ago
Pass: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pass https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pass Emacs uses .authinfo transparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7jhcq8/authinfogpg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7jhcq8/authinfogpg/
- spudlyo 4y ago
  Emacs' auth-source.el can work directly with the macOS keychain, which if you're on a Mac is pretty useful.
twp 4y ago
https://www.chezmoi.io/ https://www.chezmoi.io/ supports: * Keeping secrets in your password manager (all major password managers are supported), see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/password-managers/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/password-managers/. * Encrypting entire files with gpg or age, see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/encryption/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/encryption/. You can also bootstrap your gpg/age private key on a new machine with a passphrase, see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions/encryption/ https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions....
nverno 4y ago
I do the same, just copy .gnupg folder over via ssh / usb / yubikey.
nirvdrum 4y ago
I use git-crypt with VCSH for dotfiles and Ansible for provisioning, using Ansible's built-in encryption for some data. It works pretty well, but to make things less annoying, I prompt for decrypt passwords up front and if typo it, you won't know until much later when bringing a machine up from scratch.

_0xdd 4y ago

I'm a BSD user, so I tend to gravitate towards using rcs. Took a little while to get the muscle memory down, but it does work well for keeping track of my dotfiles.

neeh0 4y ago

nix home-manager is really great at this (and declarative!)

djhworld 4y ago

I always start out with the best of intentions for dotfile mangement etc, using tools like stow, git and so on. Eventually I get lazy and don't bother checking stuff in and forget where half of the stuff is. Might try this solution but I'm too cynical to think it'll be something I'll stick with

dewey 4y ago
Exactly the same for me, at some point I realized that just copying over some config files from a backup is easier than trying to keep things neat and tidy for years just to be prepared for setting up a new computer every few years.
- layer8 4y ago
  It’s more for when you change a setting, that you don’t have to manually change it on n accounts/machines.
agumonkey 4y ago
I often think I need to have weekly backups done for me so I can skip managing at times without accumulating too much untracked cruft.
sudhirkhanger 4y ago
It's useful if you have a second machine or even work machine where you want to keep your bash profile, IDE settings, etc. in sync.

gillh 4y ago

At our startup (FluxNinja), we provide MacBooks and Linux Desktops (System76) to our engineering staff. We have invested in common dotfiles[0] to help them keep dev experience consistent across machines. We use chezmoi for dotfiles management. Really recommend investing in common dotfiles at the organization level. For young developers, a standard setup provides a big productivity boost. [0] https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles

firstSpeaker 4y ago
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Two questions: Does this make a backup of an existing set of .files? Does this also install required packages using brew?
- gillh 4y ago
  1. It doesn't do a good job in making a backup of existing files as it's meant to be setup on a new machine. However, the setup script can be quickly modified to backup existing files. See [0]. 2. Yes, it installs required packages via brew both on macOS and Linux. See [1]. [0] https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/assets/executable_install.sh https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/assets/... [1] https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/bin/executable_sync_brews.sh https://github.com/fluxninja/dotfiles/blob/master/sw/bin/exe...
sudhirkhanger 4y ago
How is Chezmoi compared to Stow? Currently using Stow but Chezmoi seems to be interesting.
pprotas 4y ago
Is the usage of these standard dotfiles required for all developers? Personally I would always prefer to use my own dotfiles at work

prima-facie 4y ago

I use something similar but call it cfg: https://gist.github.com/radupotop/c1d2b77c24ddfcfae93d840f51e90b1d https://gist.github.com/radupotop/c1d2b77c24ddfcfae93d840f51... Each local user has its own branch so this works: cfg push -u origin $USER It's limited to the $HOME config files only, /etc has a separate git repo.

ckolkey 4y ago

This isnt a vcs based solution, but I've been using syncthing to track my configs, with the help of a small home server. The bonus is that it automatically synchronises my work and personal laptops without me needing to do anything

jsmeaton 4y ago

I moved away from using a dotfiles repo a few years ago because I kept forgetting to add/commit files as I changed them. Instead I use mackup[0] which automatically manages symlinks to your Dropbox/Drive/Share and has support for a huge amount of software by default. You can also manually add “extra” files you wish to track if you like. [0] https://github.com/lra/mackup https://github.com/lra/mackup

snhly 4y ago

I have a similar system: I manage my dot files and a bunch of other configs by placing a git repository in my operating system's root directory, i.e. file:///.git. I use a .gitignore file to exclude most things from consideration while adding things to git. Transferring to another OS is as simple as copying the .git dir over.

Waterluvian 4y ago
Before your comment I never considered the inverse of .gitignore but apparently it’s very easy to do! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/987142/make-gitignore-ignore-everything-except-a-few-files https://stackoverflow.com/questions/987142/make-gitignore-ig...
- snhly 4y ago
  This is cool, but I actually place ignored paths into the gitignore manually. This way I will always see reminders when a new file needs to be tracked or ignored. Otherwise I would forget to track new config files. E.g. when a new program is installed, its binary will be ignored by a previous rule added to gitignore (/use/bin/*), but its newly created config files in /etc will come up red when I run `git status`.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

andersonvaz 4y ago

YADM[0] is another great tool for this very purpose which I've been using for years in combination with homebrew to setup any new (Mac) machine that I get and have everything from dotfiles to Applications installed in no time. [0] https://yadm.io https://yadm.io

asix66 4y ago

Looks similar to what I’m doing to manage my dotfiles [0] I’ll be refreshing this thread to see what others are using. [0] https://github.com/andersix/dotfiles https://github.com/andersix/dotfiles

pyrophane 4y ago

I do something similar, albeit a bit more bare-bones. I keep my dotfiles in a dotfiles folder that is a git repo and then just have a simple script to symlink everything. I have a couple of submodules in there (zplug, pyenv) and a bash script to keep them up to date, and then a few self managed binaries, like fnm. That's about it. I don't bother trying to manage anything outside of home or deal with secret values by using something like git-secret. Overall, it works great and has allowed me to keep track of how my core tools are configured without too much hassle.

timetraveller26 4y ago
Stow (https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) may be useful for the linking part
- auraham 4y ago
  Related: Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32253018
justaj 4y ago
I use Homeshick for this, which also allows me to have multiple repos: https://github.com/andsens/homeshick https://github.com/andsens/homeshick
pprotas 4y ago
This is exactly my setup. Add onto this a simple install script and you have an easy way to quickly provision (is that the right word?) a new laptop. Mine uses Homebrew to install my favorite binaries and also runs a zsh script to configure macOS defaults how I like it.
Oxidation 4y ago
Chezmoi[1] has been working well for me recently, replacing a set of Stow-able directories in a simple Git repo. I haven't started using templates and things, for now it's just environment variables. [1]: https://chezmoi.io https://chezmoi.io

andrewla 4y ago

As more applications migrate to xdg, I have simply taken to having my .config directory be a git repository. Inside that directory I have a “dotfiles” subdirectory that has managed versions of my home directory dotfiles which I symlink in.

blueflow 4y ago
This is the obvious no-code solution that adds no extra maintenance burden to anyone. And it works with any VCS or tarballs. I've been using git and tarballs to synchronize my ~/.config across half a dozen hosts.

cassepipe 4y ago

I previously found the same idea there : https://github.com/Snaipe/dot-git https://github.com/Snaipe/dot-git

bxfhjcvu 4y ago

Hourly snapshots for history. I hardly ever need to sync things between machines since vscode manages that itself. I get why some people need this but it's a net time sync for a lot of people that probably don't need it. Willing to bet it's mostly due to a lack of backups and ability to restore them to a new machine when you upgrade. One nice thing about this is that you can keep a central repo for multiple machines and use branches with rebase and merge to sync changes while keeping specific differences separate.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

redraw 4y ago

I did something similar here https://github.com/redraw/dotfiles https://github.com/redraw/dotfiles, along with some installation scripts although, nice idea on tracking the whole / instead of just ~/! the only thing I miss after aliasing dotfiles to git, is that you lose git's autocompletion features. I once tried to set it up in zsh with autocomp, but without success, should review that

drexlspivey 4y ago

From this HN comment from 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754 I use: git init --bare $HOME/.myconf alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME' config config status.showUntrackedFiles no where my ~/.myconf directory is a git bare repository. Then any file within the home folder can be versioned with normal commands like: config status config add .vimrc config commit -m "Add vimrc" config add .config/redshift.conf config commit -m "Add redshift config" config push And so one… No extra tooling, no symlinks, files are tracked on a version control system, you can use different branches for different computers, you can replicate you configuration easily on new installation.

wadkar 4y ago

Is there a name for oft-repeating content/post and the overall discussion on a given topic (dotfile management in this case) on HN? I am not complaining about the repeat. It’s just that I find it very amusing to see different people kinda-sorta reinventing the wheel (and discussing the nuts and bolts) again.

res0nat0r 4y ago

I just use yadm: https://yadm.io/ https://yadm.io/

palijer 4y ago

I've been using this which is pretty rad https://github.com/cszatmary/dot https://github.com/cszatmary/dot

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

DavideNL 4y ago

A similar post on HN: - "The best way to store your dotfiles: A bare Git repository" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19591033 - Also see: "The best way to store your dotfiles: A bare Git repository EXPLAINED" : https://www.ackama.com/what-we-think/the-best-way-to-store-your-dotfiles-a-bare-git-repository-explained/ https://www.ackama.com/what-we-think/the-best-way-to-store-y...

Touche 4y ago

The biggest pain point I have with dotfile management is that none of my computers are exactly the same, so if I start pulling dotfiles from a repo I get unwanted configuration on a machine. It could be something as simple as a Vim theme not looking right on another computer because it's using a different terminal. I guess what I should be doing is adding if statements into all of my config files, but instead I wind up just copy/pasting the parts of config that I like from my github repo and never actually doing real dotfile management. Which just leads to the repo becoming stale.

sontek 4y ago

I see a lot of people mentioning home-manager / nix in the comments. I tried drinking the nix kool-aid and home-manager and all that was a little too much more me and landed on a hybrid approach: https://github.com/sontek/homies https://github.com/sontek/homies 1. I use a `justfile` that calls `nix profile install ...` to install my packages, rather than using a nix configuration file. This allows me to use a standard package manager workflow rather than going "all in". https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L24-L29 https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L24-L2... 2. I then use GNU Stow to install my dotfile configuration: https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L93-L98 https://github.com/sontek/homies/blob/master/justfile#L93-L9... I think this is a great middle ground where I can utilize `nix` as my package manager across Linux and Mac and have consistency while not having to learn the whole configuration language or change my workflow. The other tools I use heavily in my environment: - https://asdf-vm.com/ https://asdf-vm.com/: I find this better than installing python/node/etc from nix. - https://github.com/casey/just https://github.com/casey/just: I use this as my command runner (similar to make but cleaner in my opinion)

theknarf 4y ago

I found that most tooling was overkill and now just use a single <100 Bash script [0]. [0] https://github.com/TheKnarf/configs/blob/master/setup https://github.com/TheKnarf/configs/blob/master/setup

npteljes 4y ago

I personally value Out Of Box Experience, and so, my personalization is more like installing software, instead of tweaking them. So I back up my /home, and on a new system, I just look at the backup, if I need settings for a program.

mattpallissard 4y ago

Cool, but I don't need everything versioned and I like it simple. ~/usr/src/p/dotfiles git worktree list /home/matt/usr/src/p/dotfiles 160721b5e3 [master] /home/matt/.config e195a59c7b [config] /home/matt/.gnupg b50725b47c [gnupg] /home/matt/.mozilla b5d0d07b74 [mozilla] /home/matt/.mutt f3d4a14d99 [mutt] /home/matt/.tmux a93aa509af [tmux] /home/matt/.vim 68fd61921c [vim] /home/matt/.weechat ef3d4c761f [weechat] /home/matt/.zsh 228ee42367 [zsh] /home/matt/bin b05de7d9d7 [bin] /home/matt/usr/venvs/shell 6a3b7e4c6a [shell/venv] /home/matt/usr/venvs/npm d2065c68bf [shell/npm] And only two symlinks I manually manage /home/matt/.vimrc -> .vim/.vimrc /home/matt/.zshrc -> .zsh/zshrc Everything else isn't versioned. I rely on btrfs snapshots and back ups.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago

That's nice, i just dump them in a GH repo. I get a backup too :)

GrqP 4y ago

Does this approach work with submodules? The reason I ask is because some of my configs rely on configs from other repos.