I’m wondering if there is a new tool out there that I’m missing out on.
I’ve done symlinks into a separate directory before, but by far my favorite method is to just let ~ be a git repo. It’s maximally simple, no other tooling needed besides git.
There are a few key steps to making this work well:
echo '*' > ~/.gitignore: This waygit statusisn’t full of untracked files. I can stillgit add -fwhat I actually want to track.git branch -m dots: For clarity in my shell prompt.[ -d "$HOME/.local/$(hostname)/bin" ] && PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/$(hostname)/binand similar if there’s config I want to apply only to certain hosts.
Pretty happy with nixos these days, after the initial (crazy) learning curve. But I really like the creative simplicity of this idea
Stole Forked this idea from Drew Devault.
I’m looking at NixOS now for my server, and while I understand the host config, I’m curious whether I could integrate this into my config in some way.
I’m all in on nix with home-manager these days. Really seems like an ideal framework for my dotfiles and of all the systems I’ve tried over the years this is the one I’m happiest with.
Hell of a learning curve, though.
https://www.chezmoi.io/ if you’ve got some complexity with your setup. otherwise, could be overkill.
I use Chezmoi but I have to point out some of its downfalls vs. other dotfile managers, particularly if someone is looking to migrate to it.
- Go’s templating lib is incredibly unergonomic.
- Identifying file perms and visibility in by special naming convention is pretty gross. Also makes it more difficult to migrate to another solution.
- If you’re deleting files, you need to remember to do it through
chezmoi remove .... You can’t justrmthem from your dotfiles directory, because chezmoi does not sync state; it simply applies what’s currently in your repo. - Handling multiple systems through .chezmoiignore ends up being overly verbose and unintuitive vs. the approach used by other dotfile managers
Despite these gripes I still use it because deployment via a single binary is convenient, and there’s enough control through the generated config file + system info to handle multiple kinds of deployments sort-of-sensibly (see point 4 above).
Git and symbolic links still.
Ive heard good things about GNU Stow.
I still put them in gists, with no real tooling. I pull them in selectively when I get a new machine.
