Hello, i would like to know how you manage your dotfiles.
Do you use some gui or tui?
There are many ways i don’t what to do.
Probably im going to do git repo with lazygit. I like tuis. I am managing files on two artix linux systems 1- pc and 2- laptop
Nothing at all. If things go south on the install I’ll have a clean slate. Really the only thing I have backed up are keys, everything else is nonessential.
I don’t understand what to manage about dotfiles. You mean backups?
Nix, but I’d only recommend it if you share my same brand of mental illness
Dazed and confused.
I created a file tree that looks similar to my system’s file tree, except it only contains all the files that I modified or added and only their respective directories. From there I just use
rsyncto sync those files/file tree to the system’s/.It’s convenient to see what changes I currently have but it requires a bit of manual maintenance. I only really started doing it that way because I was learning how to use rsync and I just kept going on with it because it was working for me.
I’m only working with my laptop, android phone and two Raspberry Pi’s so I can get with my little rsync based setup.
I don’t… when setting up a new system I just copy what I need from any random machine I have logged into at the time. As I need different config for different systems it doesn’t really make sense to have one perfect config on all either…
Besides. What is there to really mange. There are only a few that one are likely to change. Every thing else is in /etc. Besides all of thia is in whole system backups and snapshots anyway.
I just wrote a bash script copies the relevant files or directories I want to back up from either ~ or ~/.config and places them in a local git directory which I then push to a private repo on Codeberg. Super janky and manual but I update dotfiles so seldom that it works for what I need.
I do a git repo for my dot files with an installer that configures it based on whether I’m using Linux, macOS, or FreeBSD; a server or desktop; and whether I’m in bash or zsh. It also includes a bunch of functions and aliases that I find useful. It’s not always pretty because I also use it as a practical place to try new shell script bits when I have time. I’m hoping to change some things around soon thanks to some ideas from Dave Eddy’s bash course at ysap.sh.
i used to do this, but couldn’t figure out how to stay on top of the changes introduced by distro’s and updates to the apps; did you figure these out somehow?
I pretty much stick to straight bash and core utils, so it’s not much of a burden. Plus on the Linux side, I mostly stay with Debian and its derivatives, which limits some of the work.
But really I don’t consider every feature of my dot files to be a finished product. The core stuff is reliable, but if I catch a problem with anything more esoteric or if I see some functionality that looks interesting, it’s a brain teaser I get to tackle.
Gnu stow and a git repository.
stow creates bulk symlinks according to the folder structure.
I use a convenience package on top of stow (yas-bdsm), but yeah: stow is foundational.
This is what I use and it’s been a godsend in my home lab.
How many dot files are you changing to need some sort of manager?
chezmoi does everything I need. It’s really nice; would recommend.
For ZSH, I have a script that automatically installs oh-my-zsh and a bunch of zsh plugins, and changes my default shell to ZSH.
For everything else, some files will just get copied over, others left behind. I only “manage” them when I need to view/edit them.
I used to have everything in a git repo, but nowadays I use Nix with Home Manager, and I don’t want to look back.
Same! I even manage three different configs with the same flake!
Don’t need to I use nix
This is how I handle my nix configs though
Chezmoi
It’s the only one that just works and has enough features for me, but not too many.
