Marius's dotfiles

Usage

To start using on a new machine:

git clone https://github.com/mgedmin/dotfiles
. dotfiles/install.sh

To pull in new updates:

. dotfiles/update.sh

To add a new dotfile to version control:

~/dotfiles/grab.sh ~/.dotfilename
cd ~/dotfiles && git commit -av

To stop versioning a dotfile (if you accidentally added the wrong one):

~/dotfiles/ungrab.sh ~/.dotfilename
cd ~/dotfiles && git commit -av

How it works

The scripts will replace ~/.randomdotfile with symlinks to ~/dotfiles/randomdotfile, safely. If you have a conflict (~/.foo exists and differs in content from ~/dotfiles/foo), the install script will print a warning and keep your current ~/.foo, so you don't have to worry about accidentally losing data.

You need to re-run the install script every time you pull in new dotfiles (as opposed to new versions of already symlinked dotfiles) from a remote repository. Running ~/dotfiles/update.sh does that.

There's currently no provision for dealing with removed dotfiles -- you'll have to clean up dangling symlinks manually.

Why I wrote my own scripts for this

I'm paranoid of losing data so I want to fully understand the code that's going to be managing my dotfiles. And the best way to understand code is to write it.

Features

Files in dot directories are supported now (e.g. dotfiles/grab.sh ~/.config/yamllint/config).

You can have dotfiles specific to one machine, distinguished by the hostname. This is automatic: when a dotfile is named ~/.something.local, it'll be symlinked to ~/dotfiles/something.local.$HOSTNAME. Usually this requires you to have a shared ~/.something that includes ~/.something.local. There's one exception, ~/.mailcheckrc, which is treated as local even if it doesn't have the .local suffix (because mailcheck doesn't support includes).

You can source the install and update scripts instead of running, and that will automaticall refresh your current bash session (source the updated .profile and reload the updated .inputrc):

. ~/dotfiles/install.sh
. ~/dotfiles/update.sh

You can preview what the scripts will do by passing command-line options

-n    don't update anything, just say what would be done
-v    be verbose
-vv   be very verbose

You can force overwriting of existing dotfiles if you know they're worthless

-f    force install even if files already exist (will rename to .old)

Shortcomings

• The location of ~/dotfiles is hardcoded in the scripts.
• You cannot version entire dot directories, just individual files inside them.