dotfiles

As the name implies, this script is a tool for managing your dotfiles.

Concept

Let your dotfiles live where they want and records their changes. Only selected dotfiles are tracked for changes. If you track a directory, that directory is watched for new files.

When a change or new file is found, the change is pulled into the git repository.

Setup

Fork or clone this repository.

shell> cd ~/git/
shell> git clone https://github.com/FragmentedCurve/dotfiles.git

I recommend setting an alias for the dotfiles.sh script.

shell> alias dotfiles=~/git/dotfiles/dotfiles.sh

In addition to the alias, I recommend creating a branch other than the main (or master) branch for tracking dotfiles.

shell> dotfiles git checkout -b mybranch

Tracking dotfiles

Tracking a dotfile is as easy as doing,

shell> dotfiles track .muttrc
::: COPY     _muttrc

The filename .muttrc is relative to ~/. Filenames in the git repo have their "." replaced with an "_". You can list the files being tracked by doing,

shell> dotfiles ls
_muttrc

To watch for new files in a specific directory, you can track the directory,

shell> dotfiles track ~/.mutt
::: MKDIR    _mutt
::: WATCH    _mutt

Now when we do a pull, new files in ~/.mutt will be tracked automatically.

shell> touch ~/.mutt/foobar
shell> dotfiles pull
::: COPY     _mutt/foobar

We can see the directories we're watching by doing,

shell> dotfiles watching
_mutt

Checking the Diffs

If you want to see what the difference between your system dotfile and the git repo, you can do,

shell> dotfiles diff .muttrc
--- _muttrc     2021-11-12 09:51:06.443690988 -0500
+++ /home/user/.muttrc  2021-11-12 10:00:52.937004607 -0500
@@ -55,3 +55,4 @@
#### Fetch Mail
macro generic,index,pager G "<shell-escape>mbsync privateemail<Enter>" "offlineimap"
macro generic,index,pager I "<shell-escape>imapfilter<Enter>" "imapfilter"
+# Foobar

Running dotfiles diff without an arg will loop through all the changes.