Table of Contents

• Screenshots
• Introduction
• Setup Repository
• Track Files
• Restore Configurations
• Additional Commands

Screenshots

Introduction

This repository contains my personal configuration files (also known as dotfiles). The package lists can be found in ~/.pkglist/. To install all official packages, you can use for example cat .pkglist/pacman | pacman -S -.

In the following sections I'll explain how this dotfiles repository was set up, how to use it and how to restore them, for example on a new device.

Note: I migrated to dotfiles.sh by Eli Schwartz, which is a thin wrapper for git that implements the method described here.

Setup Repository

Setup a bare git repository in your home directory. Bare repositories have no working directory, so setup an alias to avoid typing the long command. Add the git directory ~/.dotfiles/ to the gitignore as a security measure. Setup remote and push. Hide untracked files when querying the status.

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

echo 'alias dotfiles="/usr/bin/env git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME"' \
    >> "$HOME/.zshrc"
source "$HOME/.zshrc"

echo '.dotfiles' >> "$HOME/.gitignore"
dotfiles add "$HOME/.gitignore"
dotfiles commit -m 'Git: Add gitignore'

dotfiles remote add origin https://github.com/alfunx/.dotfiles
dotfiles push --set-upstream origin master
dotfiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Track Files

Use the default git subcommands to track, update and remove files. You can obviously also use branches and all other features of git.

dotfiles status
dotfiles add .zshrc
dotfiles commit -m 'Zsh: Add zshrc'
dotfiles add .vimrc
dotfiles commit -m 'Vim: Add vimrc'
dotfiles push

To remove a file from the repository while keeping it locally you can use:

dotfiles rm --cached ~/.some_file

Restore Configurations

First clone dependent repositories, in this case for example oh-my-zsh. Clone your dotfiles repository as bare repository. Setup temporary alias and then checkout. If there exist files that collide with your repository (like a default .bashrc), the files will be moved to ~/.dotfiles.bak/. Then update all submodules and again hide untracked files when querying the status.

git clone https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh \
    "$HOME/.oh-my-zsh"

git clone --bare --recursive https://github.com/alfunx/.dotfiles \
    "$HOME/.dotfiles"

function dotfiles() {
    /usr/bin/env git --git-dir="$HOME/.dotfiles/" --work-tree="$HOME" "$@"
}

dotfiles checkout
if [ "$?" -ne 0 ]; then
    mkdir -p "$HOME/.dotfiles.bak"
    dotfiles checkout 2>&1 \
        | grep -P '^\s+[\w.]' \
        | awk {'print $1'} \
        | xargs -I{} sh -c 'cp -r --parents "{}" "$HOME/.dotfiles.bak/" && rm -rf "{}"'
    dotfiles checkout
fi

dotfiles submodule update --recursive --remote
dotfiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Note that the automatic moving of already existing (thus conflicting) files fails if there are too many of them (git cuts the message at some point).

The short variant, using a script with the commands above:

. <(curl -Ls https://dotfiles.mariya.ch)

(Note: This is for my personal use. Instead of directly sourcing the install script, you should save it somewhere on your system and review it.)

Additional Commands

Instead of the alias provided above, you can use following function. listall will show all tracked files, listtree will show those files in a tree format (requires the package treeify). You may need to use a pager for these commands.

dotfiles() {
    case "$1" in
        listall)
            shift
            dotfiles ls-tree --full-tree -r --name-only HEAD "$@"
            ;;
        listtree)
            shift
            if hash treeify 2>/dev/null; then
                dotfiles ls-tree --full-tree -r --name-only HEAD "$@" | treeify
            else
                dotfiles listall
            fi
            ;;
        *)
            /usr/bin/env git --git-dir="$HOME/.dotfiles/" --work-tree="$HOME" "$@"
            ;;
    esac
}

compdef can provide zsh autocompletion of the git command for your equivalent dotfiles command.

compdef dotfiles='git'