dotfiles

dotfiles and configuration scripts for all my systems

Overview

This project is inspired by StreakyCobra's post on HackerNews and durdn's tutorial further outlining the method. The only change is the use of Git sparse clones to exclude this README from home directories while still keeping it visible on GitHub.

Layout and branches

• The root of every branch maps to the home directory.
• The master branch serves as the base for all other branches, containing dotfiles common to all configurations. These files will not be modified per-branch; any conditional configuration (e.g. per-platform, per-distribution, per-system) will be made in the master branch and evaluated at runtime. An example of this is in .zshrc, where the os variable is set and checked to set PATH, aliases, etc. This is simply easier to manage.
• Rebasing (git rebase master), not merging, is used to update non-master branches.

In non-master branches, any additional setup scripts can be found in .scripts/ and any documentation can be found in .docs/. Refer to this documentation before cloning for any additional tasks required before cloning or for otherwise setting up a system.

WARNING: Never use dotfiles clean/git clean on this repository. Doing so will result in files in your home directory being deleted. While it is possible to provide some level of safety by using a .gitignore for all files, this means dotfiles status will files that haven't been added (which is often convenient). Git does not provide a way to alias over a built-in, so dotfiles config alias.clean 'noop' will not work. Prioritising safety over convenience might seem like a bad compromise, but simply remembering to not use clean is straightforward enough. You have been warned.

Cloning

• Perform a bare clone of the repository:

$ git clone --bare git@github.com:jmcvaughn/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles/

• Temporarily create the dotfiles alias (this is already defined in .zshrc):

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

• Enable sparse checkout and exclude README.md at the root of the repository. Note that while Git 2.25.0 introduced the new git sparse-checkout command, the man page states this is currently experimental, so for now this will be configured manually:

$ dotfiles config core.sparseCheckout true
$ printf '/*\n!/README.md\n' > $HOME/.dotfiles/info/sparse-checkout
$ dotfiles read-tree -mu HEAD

• Checkout the desired branch

$ dotfiles checkout mac

To checkout README.md to modify it:

$ printf '/*\n' > $HOME/.dotfiles/info/sparse-checkout
$ dotfiles read-tree -mu HEAD