📕 subnode [[@karlicoss/dotfiles]] in 📚 node [[dotfiles]]
📓 garden/karlicoss/setup/dotfiles.md by @karlicoss

Table of Contents

awesome-dotfiles https://github.com/webpro/awesome-dotfiles

TODO check occasionally?

What I tried

gnu stow?

apparently a parallel hierarchy with symlinks?
would be nice to specify, which directories should be created and which should just be symlinked. Otherwise stuff might end up in symlinked folders

  • very clumsy to use, hard to replace existing entries, no apparent way of deleting them (unlike git)

fresh to build gh config? https://github.com/freshshell/fresh

you can write a configuration, and it will symlinka all automatically
apparently can source from gh repos, so you could just 'follow' someones' dotfiles (not very portable though)

homesick? https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick

looks like a parallel hierarchy of dotfiles mimicing /home? could be convenient to manage with symlinks…
wonder if .homesick directory is configurable

ok, so if i create home dir and add relative symlinks to it, it sort of works fine.
add a script to check symlink integrity?
still unclear what should i do with patch files. maybe have a manual dir with symlinks as well?
homesick track? although it's a bit weird if configuration comes from different files, but i guess it's quite rare

ugh.. homedirsubdir is a bit weird.. could make it support relative symlinks within repo
ugh.. homesick seems to rewrite relative symlinks to absolute… wtf???

mackup? https://github.com/lra/mackup

apparently just backs up and symlinks configs for some applications
hmm, so it supports doublecmd. wonder how they handle their configs..
nope, just copies. nothing interesting

  • [2021-05-04] doesn't support mc

vcsh http://blog.tfnico.com/2014/03/managing-dot-files-with-vcsh-and-myrepos.html

weird stuff, messes with git and uses mr tool to manipulate on multiple repos at the same time
take another look at it?
mm – ok, so apparently it's just like single repo view but routing to different subrepos
e.g. vcsh init vim; vcsh vim commit .vimrc

dotbot?

yaml configs.. ugh

dotdrop https://github.com/deadc0de6/dotdrop

allows templating thanks to jinja2
erm.. it copies, not symlinks apparently

dotgit https://github.com/kobus-v-schoor/dotgit

hmm encryption!
aims to keep all in single repository
too comlicated.

https://github.com/evanpurkhiser/dots has post installation script

was updated 2 years ago

using git repository with symlinks + external ~ working directory [[git]]

/repos/configuration
cgit command

  • cons: not dropbox friendly because of symlinks
    maybe sync via syncthing?

    • TODO how to make todos here?

  • keep only symlinks to files unless it absolutely makes sense to symlink directory
    why: if it's a directory locally and a symlink in the repo (e.g. with autostart dir), it won't merge easily

  • symlink into from various repos

    • public dotfiles
    • private dotfiles
    • machine specific dotfiles
    • files which aren't under git (configs-nogit)
      config-nogit: use tree command to store contents
      maybe git lfs would be better for that??
    • scripts
    • histories: bash, python, etc.
    • etc

bootstrapping

  • alias cgit='git –git-dir=/repos/configuration/.git –work-tree=/home/karlicos'
  • cgit ireset – to restore working dir state
  • run check.sh from ~ and restore all the missing symlinks
    resolve filtype configs (file vs symlinks)

workflow

cgit status to see if anything has changed
cgit add / cgit commit / cgit push

try git lfs?

something about files which can't be kept in git [[git]]

for configs which are patched via script, symlink what patches it [[setup]]

ln -s "$(realpath $BASH_SOURCE" "$CDIR"

Tooling

jq for patching JSON [[json]]

https://jqplay.org/ is also quite convenient

[2018-06-20] configs which are not symlinking – have a script which checks them against reference every few hours and complains if config doesn't match the reference?

I guess it would belong to configuration repository

related [[infra]]

[2019-06-01] motivation for core.worktree [[git]] [[setup]] [[dotfiles]]

can't use bare repository since they don't have index
we don't want to use working directory since it's just confusing
solution is git config core.worktree $HOME

[2020-07-12] Manage your dotfiles with Git - openSUSE News [[git]]

[2020-05-26] Dotfiles - Joe Yates' Blog [[git]] [[dotfiles]]

very similal to how I manage it – the git based approach is super simple, portable and predictable

📖 stoas
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