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-- markdown --

dotfiles -- shell and tool configuration files from $HOME

©️ Copyright 1989-2019 Greg A. Woods, and other contributors.

See the file copyright for details.

How To Track Dotfiles Changes With Git

Various people* suggest starting a "dotfiles" repository with:

git init --bare $HOME/.dotfiles-git

(Here the "--bare" avoids creating a sub-directory first, and is in effect the way to name the GIT_DIR in the current directory instead of having it default to ".git".)

Tell git to find the actual worktree in the parent of the repository:

git config --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles-git core.worktree ..
git config --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles-git core.bare false

(the above doesn't work right if you're not within your $HOME when running git)

Then use a shell alias to D.T.R.T. to operate on the repository and your $HOME:

alias dfgit='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles-git/'

Or better yet a more portable shell function:

dfgit ()
{
	git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles-git/ ${1+"${@}"}
}

Moving from SCCS to Git(Hub)

I've created my dotfiles repo from my original $HOME/SCCS repository using my modified version of git-sccsimport:

git-sccsimport --move-date=2010/11/5T00:00:00 --move-offset=3 --expand-kw --maildomain=robohack.ca --git-dir="$HOME/work/home" --dirs SCCS

(Note: On 2010/11/04 I arrived in Kelowna from Toronto, so since that time the local SCCS timestamps are three hours less than they were, so if an SCCS timestamp is from before that date, then I tell git-sccsimport to add three hours to it. Combined with use of --expand-kw it is then possible to see the exact correspondence between the new Git dates and the dates in all the SCCS headers using "git log --date=local -p --full-diff".)

Then I published my dotfiles!

cd ~/work/home
hub create robohack/dotfiles

To use Git to record changes to my dotfiles I just moved (or copied) the .git directory into place:

mv ~/work/home/.git ~/.dotfiles-git

If you do this then you don't need to add the core.bare = true git config entry as "By default a repository that ends in "/.git" is assumed to be not bare (bare = false), while all other repositories are assumed to be bare (bare = true)."

You can avoid having git complain about all the other things you keep in $HOME not being tracked by turning off that feature:

dfgit config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Then you can clone to a new machine with (again note "--bare", which you do need here else you'll get the repository cloned into ~/.dotfiles-git/.git and everything initially checked out in ~/.dotfiles-git):

git clone --bare https://github.com/USERNAME/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles-git
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles-git/ --work-tree=$HOME checkout
. ~/.shrc	# to get "dfgit"

Note: Until I figure out the Magit vs. GIT_DIR problem* I won't likely be using Git directly to record changes -- I'll continue using SCCS and incrementally update dotfiles from them*.

More Notes and Open Questions {#more}

Maybe (???) you can add the following to the end of your ~/.dotfiles-git/config file to enable overriding from another (local) repository:

[include]
	path = ~/.dotfiles_local-git

Note you could just name the GIT_DIR "~/.git", but that is very dangerous! An inadvertent "git clean" in a non-git-controlled sub-directory of $HOME would wipe your world (well all but what's tracked in ~/.git)!!! Indeed any other "git" command in a non-git-controlled sub-directory of $HOME could cause you headaches.

Maybe the GIT_DIR should be called "$HOME/.home-git" since it can track any file under $HOME.

But how to manage changes with Magit???

  • That is the question -- how do we get Magit to use a different GIT_DIR for just one repository!?!?!?

What I Actually Still Do {#still}

Instead of using Git directly to modify my dotfiles I still use SCCS, and then re-run the git-sccsimport every time I want to push changes to Git, using the following from ~/.shrc (see the function publishdotfiles):

cd && \
git-sccsimport --move-date=2010/11/5T00:00:00 --move-offset=3		\
   --expand-kw --maildomain=robohack.ca --git-dir="$HOME/work/home"	\
   --dirs SCCS && \
cd $HOME/work/home && \
git push --mirror

I fetch new updates on other machines using rsync. See the function syncdotfiles in ~/.shrc:

rsync -v -lptHS --progress --delete-after --stats	\
   --files-from=$HOME/dotfiles.list $HOME		\
   ${CENTRAL_USER}@${CENTRAL_SERVER}:.

References

Another detailed description of this kind of setup is found at: [https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles]

#ident "@(#)HOME:dotfiles.README 37.2 24/02/28 18:08:13 (woods)"