Dotfiles.github.com - A guide to dotfiles on GitHub

Dotfiles.github.com - A guide to dotfiles on GitHub(dotfiles.github.com)

122 points by netherland 14 years ago | 37 comments

(Obvious) disclaimer: this is a user-hosted subdomain on GitHub. It is not an official GitHub page (even if the logo is two octocats snuggling together).

udp 14 years ago | |

Which means, of course, it's also a repository if anyone is interested:

https://github.com/dotfiles/dotfiles.github.com/

ah- 14 years ago |

I've meant to finally put my dotfiles into a repository but the one thing keeping me from it is that I haven't yet stumbled upon a script to symlink everything into it's place that I'm totally satisfied with.

I don't use ruby and don't want to install rake on each machine for something that should be possible with a simple shell script, and didn't like the scripts I saw so far. Everything had a medium or large aspect that kept me from using it.

Maybe I just need to write my own thing.

JoshTriplett 14 years ago | |

I highly recommend not symlinking things at all; just have the repository itself as your home directory.

Whenever I set up a new machine, I always do this:

    git clone git://joshtriplett.org/git/home
    mv home/.git .
    rm -rf home
    git checkout -f

(There probably exists a simpler way to do that, but I haven't found it yet.)

I can always check out my repository via git:// even on a machine where I want to push to it, because my repository includes a ~/.gitconfig containing:

    [url "ssh://joshtriplett.org/"]
            pushInsteadOf = "git://joshtriplett.org/"

So, I can automatically push as long as I have SSH access to my server. (I wrote the support for pushInsteadOf in upstream git, specifically to enable this use case.)

epe 14 years ago | | |

I don't know if it's any simpler, but I tend to do:

    git init .
    git remote add origin git://github.com/eentzel/dotfiles.git
    git checkout -t origin master

sciurus 14 years ago | |

Your script can be pretty simple. E.G. Create symlinks when they don't exist and report errors if creating them would clobber something else:

    DOTFILES=$HOME/where/the/dotfiles/live/in/git
    for T in $DOTFILES/*; do
        TARGET=$(readlink -e $T)
        LINK_NAME=$($HOME/.$(basename $TARGET))
        # test if a file, working symlink, or broken symlink already exists
        if [ -e $LINK_NAME -o -L $LING_NAME ]; then
            CURRENT_TARGET=$(readlink -m $LINK_NAME)
            if [ $CURRENT_TARGET != $TARGET ]; then
                    echo "$LINK_NAME already exists and is really $CURRENT_TARGET"
            fi
        fi
        ln -s $TARGET $LINK_NAME
    done

Remove stale dotfile symlinks:

    for L in $(find $HOME -maxdepth 1 -type l -name '.*'); do
        if [ ! -e $L ]; then rm $L; fi
    done

This assumes you'll use git excludes to keep files you don't want out of your repository. E.G. if you don't want $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa in git then you'd have $DOTFILES/ssh/.gitignore with 'id_rsa' in it. If you try to manage your excludes through the linking you'll end up with a very ugly script like what I have at https://github.com/sciurus/dotfile_management

zheng 14 years ago | |

I would recommend it. I'm not fully happy yet with my setup, but it's all in bash, and fairly simple really. Plus, when you do it yourself you will understand everything you do, and be less likely to screw up something you didn't actually want changed.

natep 14 years ago | |

I've been using justone's dfm (dotfile manager) script[1]. The only requirement is PERL 5.8, which is just about everywhere, I think. Seems good enough so far, but I'm not sure how I'll integrate Oh-My-Zsh 2.0[2] yet. Maybe someone can compare it to homesick or do a PERL port...

[1] https://github.com/justone/dotfiles [2] https://github.com/sorin-ionescu/oh-my-zsh

adestefan 14 years ago | |

I use the dircombine perl script that has been used by Joey Hess since his first SVN home directory article was written. You can also look at the fixups scripts that uses dircombine to setup everything. It's simple and to the point.

http://git.kitenet.net/?p=joey/home.git;a=blob_plain;f=bin/d...

NeutronBoy 14 years ago | |

I just use a bash script that I add a line to symlink each config to the correct location. I really like this as I know exactly what's happening.

jcurbo 14 years ago | |

I use homesick (which is written in Ruby) and I think I agree with you. I like the premise of having the repo in a subdirectory and symlinking the files in - I don't like to have the whole homedir in git - I only want certain things in the repo in the first place, not everything. Seems like the rest could be done in a shell script for maximum portability.

rocktronica 14 years ago |

With respect, a guide to dotfiles should explain what dotfiles are.

pbiggar 14 years ago | |

If someone needs to ask what dotfiles are, they aren't in the target audience of this project.

subpixel 14 years ago | | |

I have to disagree - I had never heard the term before, but now that I see the power/convenience of a symlinked configuration, I'm interested in learning more.

I'm sure many others like myself would appreciate a more thorough, introductory walkthrough. I'll be asking my more hard-core friends for guidance in the meantime.

oacgnol 14 years ago |

I highly recommend using symlinks to synchronize dotfiles with a locally cloned repo. That way, you can make changes to the dotfiles sitting in your home directory and it'll be reflected in your repo should you want to commit those changes.

uggedal 14 years ago | |

I just track ~/ directly and add appropriate .gitignore entries to those files which are ephemeral or not part of my local configuration:

https://github.com/uggedal/dotfiles/blob/master/.gitignore

mise 14 years ago | |

Wait, I've done it the other way around. I have a repo directory, and I created symlinks in ~/ pointing to the dotfiles in the repo. I have a simple install script to symlink the files.

Would you suggest having the physical files in ~/ and adding their symlinks to a repo?

ichilton 14 years ago | | |

I would think he meant what you said.... symlinks in the repo doesn't sound a good idea.

AdamGibbins 14 years ago |

While we're on the subject - has anyone found a good way to separate environments while keeping your setup fairly DRY? e.g. I have slight variations in my aliases for work/home, different git config email etc.

You can find mine here: http://github.com/adamgibbins/dotfiles

seryl 14 years ago |

I use something relatively similar, but I do it with Chef.

(shameless plug) Kindness: A nice way to bootstrap your box (with chef) http://joshtoft.com/kindness/

It takes advantage of site-cookbooks with Chef, letting you bring in your own site-cookbooks and also takes your chef-solo.json (if it exists).

I made it to get away from the rake dotfile sillyness.

tlvince 14 years ago |

A workaround to the "symlink farm" method is making use of "--config=PATH" options for most apps and setting up aliases.

Conforming to the XDG base dir standard as much as possible makes sense but can get painful sometimes (e.g. vim: http://tlvince.com/2011/02/03/vim-respect-xdg/).

lyime 14 years ago |

@github - Please make a font a bit darker.

slikts 14 years ago | |

It's a user page, so not by github

drivebyacct2 14 years ago |

A Rakefile for dotfiles? Seriously?

Plugawy 14 years ago | |

Why not? I've been using it without any problems. It's just easier to manage.

exDM69 14 years ago | | |

Because not everyone has a Ruby development environment available. It would be a lot better idea to stick with Makefiles or other more commonly available Unix tools.

A lot of Ruby people seem to add a Rakefile or a Ruby script to do some simple task like installing a few dotfiles. That makes them a lot less useful to me (for example), as I don't have a Ruby env available on all machines I use.

Same goes for Node.js, Python and Perl people. If a "standard unix" tool can do something almost as easily as a Rakefile/whatever, you should probably stick to the standard tools. I don't know what you should do with Windows, though.

DOTFILES=$HOME/where/the/dotfiles/live/in/git for T in $DOTFILES/*; do TARGET=$(readlink -e $T) LINK_NAME=$($HOME/.$(basename $TARGET)) # test if a file, working symlink, or broken symlink already exists if [ -e $LINK_NAME -o -L $LING_NAME ]; then CURRENT_TARGET=$(readlink -m $LINK_NAME) if [ $CURRENT_TARGET != $TARGET ]; then echo "$LINK_NAME already exists and is really $CURRENT_TARGET" fi fi ln -s $TARGET $LINK_NAME done