dotfiles

linux/macos environment files

Overview

You can cherry-pick individual files from this repository as needed. Alternatively this repository is setup in such a way that with some git "trickery" you can source dot files directly from this repository. If you choose to go down this latter route it is highly recommended that you fork this repo before using it for your local machines. For clarity this repository is purpose built for development environments (usually ephemeral-ish) that I work within. As such, some of the configuration defined in these dot files may not meet your needs/requirements.

The remainder of this readme is dedicated to using git to automate the lifecycle management of these files on a local machine.

Background

The general idea for this dot files management pattern came from a post from Atlassian (which came from discussions on HackerNews). The high level concept is that you use a git repository (with a custom name) in your home directory to allow you to easily pull updated dot files from a git repo. This local repository is configured in such a way that it only tracks files which are explicitly added to it. Meaning, by default, it ignores all the files in your home directory (or sub directories) unless it is told to manage those files as part of your dot files.

Initial Setup

The following are a set of bash script commands to run in your home directory (the root of your home directory). Note that there are two lines below (for user.name and user.email) that need to be fixed prior to running the script. It's suggested the script file be named .dotsetup.sh as that will automatically be git-ignored.

# alias a customized git command to "dot" to make it easier to work with the repo:
alias dot='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'
shopt -s expand_aliases

# Have git ignore the `.dotfiles` folder as that's where the git repo config has been placed
rm -fr .gitignore
echo ".dotfiles" >> .gitignore
echo ".dotsetup.sh" >> .gitignore

# clone and configure the repo:
rm -fr .dotfiles
rm -fr .git
git clone --bare https://github.com/jsco2t/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

# configure user for repo
dot config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
dot config --local user.name "user name"
dot config --local user.email "email@address"

# post-clone cleanup
alias dot='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'
shopt -s expand_aliases

dot fetch
dot reset --hard
dot pull origin main

If you are going to be performing development (ex: creating branches for development) you may want to clone the repository as a non-bare repo. The following should accomplish this.

# alias a customized git command to "dot" to make it easier to work with the repo:
alias dot='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/'
shopt -s expand_aliases

# Have git ignore the `.dotfiles` folder as that's where the git repo config has been placed
rm -fr .gitignore
echo ".dotfiles" >> .gitignore
echo ".dotsetup.sh" >> .gitignore

# clone and configure the repo:
rm -fr .dotfiles
rm -fr .git
git init --separate-git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles -b main
dot remote add origin https://github.com/jsco2t/dotfiles.git

dot config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
dot config --local user.name "user name"
dot config --local user.email "email@address"

alias dot='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'
shopt -s expand_aliases
dot fetch
dot reset --hard origin/main
dot branch --set-upstream-to=origin/main main
dot pull origin main

You will then need to add the following into your .bashrc (or .zshrc):

alias dot='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

If this has worked as expected - you should be able to open a new shell and run:

dot pull

And the pull command should work as expected.

Working with the dotfiles repo

To help formalize working with this repository the git command is aliased to dot with the necessary configuration to work with the dotfiles repo. What this means in practice is that when working with the dotfiles repo you need to use dot instead of git (dot add, dot commit, dot push, dot pull...etc).