dot files done right

That's the hope, anyway.

The idea is that you share config files across all projects. It should have files like .prettierrc that define the coding standard for all the projects, etc.

Any user preferences don't live here - put them in your home directory, or whereever the application wants them to be.

How to use this repository

Add it as a git submodule to your project. Run the below in the root directory of you project

$ git submodule add <this repository>

This creates a submodule in the dotfiles directory off your project root.

Then, for each config file, or config directory, that you want, symlink the git submodule file to the one in the project root directory,

$ ln -s dotfiles/projectroot/<config-file-or-directory> <config-file-or-directory>

e.g.

$ ln -s dotfiles/projectroot/.prettierrc .prettierrc

Tip

If you already have, e.g. a .prettierrc, before you create the symlink, you may want to

$ diff dotfiles/projectroot/.prettierrc .prettierrc

To check you're not trashing your own carefully crafted config. It should be stored in git anyway so you never lose anything.

Warning

For .vscode files settings.json and launch.json, you need to symlink the directory, because for some reason (probably windows symlink limitations) symlinks for the files don't work:

$ ln -s dotfiles/projectroot/.vscode .vscode

Note

There's no script to do this as others have done for good reasons:

• You may not want all of it and this way allows you to link just the files you need
• The commands are easy to get right, and if you don't get it right first time it's easy to fix.
• It's a one-off command for a only few files files, deal with it 😃
• Any script needs tests, etc. and my cost-benefit analysis of this resulted in me not writing a script.

Tip

So that there's a chance this might work on windows, do this:

$ git config --global core.symlinks true

This tells git to try its best with symlinks on windows.

Updating dotfiles from the source repository

When someone else has added an enhancemenrt that you want do this:

$ git submodule update --remote dotfiles

This updates your dotfiles submodule and so all symlinked files are updated in one go. Magic!

Updating your local copy and pushing it to the source repository

$ cd dotfiles

Warning

Make sure your git submodule is not detached - if it is:

$ git checkout main

follow the instructions to create a new branch from the detached head, e.g.

$ git branch <new-branch-name> <the hash it gave you>

make sure main is up to date

$ git fetch

$ git pull

switch it all to your new branch

$ git checkout <new-branch-name>

$ git merge main

If the git submodule is not detached

$ git checkout <new-branch-name>

Everything is now on your new branch which you can now create a pull request from

Benefits of this approach

You get to store you config across all projects in one place.

You can update the config from any of your projects and upgrade each of the other projects as needed.

Caveats

It's not tested on windows, where symlinks don't work so well.

(try cmd /c mklink C:\Users\me\AppData\Roaming\Code\User\settings.json C:\git\config.vscode\settings.json)

Many don't like git submodules. Yes, I agree, they are a scunner, but they do the job right for this purpose, at least, IMHO.