Manage your dotfiles with ease

There are are two main steps required to easily manage dotfiles (between machines or installations):

Keeping it in sync beetween computers with git repository
Having script which takes care of linking files in dotfiles repo folder to their proper locations in the system.

While setting git repo for our dotfiles is simple, writing a linking script isn't so obvious.

Usually adding new files to dotfile folder imply modifying a script which makes it hard to manage over time as it grows. My idea was to write a self-managable dotfile repo, which structure mirror the file structure on the local OS (repo has one home folder). Additionally I decided to link only files, not directories, because you may want to have some files in shared dotfiles folder only on one local machine.

In result you don't have to change a script when you add new dotfiles as long as you keep file hierarchy in a repo the same as in the system. Look at the source:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'fileutils'
require 'pathname'

# Recursively link files from source to target directory
def linkify source_path, target_path
  Dir.glob( File.join(source_path, '*'), File::FNM_DOTMATCH ).each do |src_fn_path|
    src_pn = Pathname.new src_fn_path
    next if %w(. ..).include? src_pn.basename.to_s
    if src_pn.directory?
      FileUtils.mkdir_p File.join(target_path, src_pn.basename)
      linkify File.join(source_path, src_pn.basename), File.join(target_path, src_pn.basename)
    else
      FileUtils.ln_s src_pn, File.join(target_path, src_pn.basename), force: true
    end
  end
end
linkify File.join( File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__)), 'home' ), ENV['HOME']

Whenever you add new dotfiles to your repo , just run this script and you're good to go.

Here is my dotfiles repo.

Manage your dotfiles with ease

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