dotfiles

These are my linux configuration files. They’re tracked in a git repository separate from the working tree, which is just my home directory; this replaces an ongoing symlink song and dance for a little upfront setup effort. Given that the upfront work can be copy-pasted, it’s a pretty great tradeoff.

to install on a new computer

To get up and running:

clone the dotfiles repo
copy the files over to their proper locations, and
configure the dotfile git repo to ignore all untracked files

The last step is so neither I nor you ever accidentally push our whole home directory to github, lol. So:

git clone --separate-git-dir=$HOME/.dots git@github.com:ambirdsall/dots.git tmpdotfiles
rsync --recursive \
      --verbose \
      --exclude '.git' \
      --backup --suffix=.dots.orig \
      tmpdotfiles/ $HOME/
rm -r tmpdotfiles

git --git-dir=$HOME/.dots/ --work-tree=$HOME config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

If you’ve already installed emacs, you can now run

make install

managing this git directory

The ~/bin/dots file provides a dots command to handle all interaction with the git repo. It wraps git, passing the correct directories to --git-dir and --work-tree and paving a few common paths: it defaults to git status -s when called with no arguments, and dots c some commit message expands to ~dots commit -m “some commit message”~.

todo list

[ ] find way to invoke magit-status with a separate git dir and work tree I think there’s an emacs package that sets up a yadm / magit integration (via TRAMP, I think?); since, IIUC, yadm is more or less a thin wrapper over a bare git repo, this same approach ought to be usable here.