forkmydots

This is a basic shell script based dotfiles manager that includes example dotfiles used by the author.

The primary goal is to make the scripts compatible with the largest number of shells and to leave it at that--shell scripts only. No Ruby. No Python. As few external dependencies as possible.

The architecture of projects like this (this is certainly not the first) lends itself particularly well to forking; don't like the default dotfiles? forkmydots by creating your own subdirectiroy of homes/. This way you can still easily merge changes from upstream when changes are made to the basic scripts.

See the Layout or HOWTO section for more information.

Features

• Back up your existing dotfiles before clobbering them with the install script.
• Architecture lends itself well to forking using organizational strategy that minimizes the risk of merge conflicts.
• Use hard links to dotfiles in the forkmydots project directory, but only IF this directory is located on the same filesystem as your home directory; otherwise use symlinks. Either way, this allows you to modify your dotfiles in place and track changes in the git repository at the same time.
• Well-documented and easily extensible management script.
• Install script currently replaces "^FORKMYDOTS_DIR=.*$" in any dotfile with the absolute location of the forkmydots project using sed. Actually, maybe this is a bug...? But the principle of modifying dotfiles before installing them could be useful. Like orange tapioca.

Planned

• Easily push repo to account on a remote system and run install commands remotely so your dots are ready and waiting on that remote system next time you log in.

Got any other ideas? forkmydots, implement them, and let me know :)

Getting Started

$ git clone git@github.com:waynr/forkmydots.git
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh backup
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh install

This will set you up with the dotfiles included with the project by default.

HOWTO

Below are some example applications of the commands offered by the forkmydots.sh script.

Install dotfiles into the current user's home directory.

# Install dotfiles from forkmydots/homes/default, which is the default dotfiles
# collection installed with this repository.
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh install 

# Install dotfiles from forkmydots/homes/<dotsname>
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh -d forkmydots/homes/<dotsname> install 

# Install dotfiles from a backup located in forkmydots/homes/<dotsname>
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh -d forkmydots/homes/<dotsname>/backups/2013-03-24_090055 install 

# Install dotfiles from arbitrary directory. All regular files in this directory
# will be prepended with a period and linked to the user's home directory.
# Except for files that end with ".swp". 
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh -d <path/do/dir> install

Backup

Running a backup creates a new "dotfiles" directory which contains dotfiles backed up in a form that can be installed using the forkmydots.sh script. It only backs up files from the user's home directory which match the dotfiles in the dotfiles directory specified on the command line with the "-d" option.

# Find the names of all files in <path/to/dir> relative to that directory, then
# create backups of the files with those same names in
# <path/to/dir>/backups/YYYY-mm-dd_HHMMSS/.
$ ./forkmydots/bin/forkmydots.sh -d <path/do/dir> backup

Layout

• bin/ This directory is added to PATH in homes/default/bashrc.
• backups/ This is where backups are stored when running forkmydots.sh backup. This directory does not exist until the backup command is run. See the HOWTO section for more information on how backups work.
• lib/ This directory stores different sets of libraries used to separate shell functions in to logical categories.
• homes/ and machines/ There is nothing special about these directories. However, they are handy for separating data from functional components in the system. homes/ is intended to store to store different groups of dotfiles; this project comes with default which is actaully the machine-indifferent portion of the author's dotfiles repository. Subdirectories of machines/ are intended to represent dotfiles that are expected to be different on different computers.
• scripts/ These are small projects the original author used to keep in his dotfiles repository before refactoring it into this project. They will probably be removed eventually.

TODO

• Create script that makes the process of "infecting" another user account with this repo a little smoother. This might look something like:

# Perform initial checkouts in the remote repository; should back up existing
# files using git stash before doing this.
$ forkmydots.sh checkout user@host  
# Add the new repository as a remote for the current repository.
$ forkmydots.sh add-remote user@host  
# Optionally push the local user's ssh public key to that remote repository.
$ forkmydots.sh push-key user@host  

• Refine the backup behavior so that backups for a given dotfiles directory are stored in a subdirectory of that dotfile directory.