Dotfiler

Dotfiler is a script that helps you maintain (chosen) dot-files as symlinks to another directory. This can make backup and version control of the dot-files you consider important easier.

Understanding Dotfiler

Dotfiler helps you manage dot-files according to the following convention:

Managed dot-files (normal files or directories) are symlinks to target files in a designated dot-files directory.
The target files lack the leading dot of the dot-file they represent, but otherwise have the same name.

For example, if your dot-files directory is ~/dotdir and we want to manage .emacs.d, and ~/.profile, we would have the following files (-> indicates symlink):

# Normal files
~/dotdir/emacs.d
~/dotdir/profile

# Symlinked dot-files
~/.emacs.d  -> ~/dotdir/emacs.d
~/.profile  -> ~/dotdir/profile

# Unmanaged files remain untouched in ~, for example:
~/.vimrc
~/.ssh

Installation

Recommended way assumes Git versioning of the dot-files directory:

# Replace '~/dotfiles' with the your preferred dot-files directory
mkdir ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles
git init
git submodule add git://github.com/cbaatz/dotfiler.git
ln -s dotfiler/dotfiler . # Optional but recommended

By default, Dotfiler uses the parent directory of its install directory as the dot-files directory. For example, if you installed Dotfiler in ~/mydotfiles/dotfiler, the dot-files directory would be ~/mydotfiles. You can set the dot-files directory explicitly with the DOTFILES_DIR environment variable.

Alternatively, if you’re not using Git for your dot-files directory, or you prefer to install Dotfiler somewhere else, you can clone the repo and set the DOTFILES_DIR environment variable:

# Replace '/opt/local/manual' with your preferred path
cd /opt/local/manual
git clone git://github.com/cbaatz/dotfiler.git
# Add the dotfiler script to your PATH and set the DOTFILES_DIR to
# your preferred dot-files directory:
echo "PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/manual/dotfiler" >> ~/.profile
echo "DOTFILES_DIR=~/mydotfiles"

Usage

dotfiler status

Show dot-files management status (dot-files directory and status for each file).

dotfiler add DOT_FILES
# Example: dotfiler add ~/.emacs ~/.vimrc

Manages dot-files by moving each file to your dot-files directory (removing the leading dot) and creating a symlink from your home-dir.

dotfiler restore DOT_FILES
# Example: dotfiler restore ~/.emacs ~/.vimrc
#          dotfiler restore ~/* # Unmanage all

Unmanages dot-files by moving each file back to your home-dir (removing the symlink). Ignores files that are not managed.

dotfiler update [<options>]
# Example: git checkout HEAD^
#          dotfiler update

Updates symlinks in home-dir to point to the files in the dot-files directory.

Options:

--overwrite Overwrite normal files in home-dir with symlinks to files in dot-files directory. DANGEROUS.

Alternative management approach

If you’d like to avoid symlinks, you can make your home directory a git repo, exclude all files by default (echo '*' > ~/.git/info/exclude) and add exceptions for each file you want to manage (echo '!.emacs.d/' >> ~/.git/info/exclude). See http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitignore.html for details.

I find managing dot-files in a separate directory neater and it fits my back-up scheme better.

Abandoned ideas

Files inside dot-directories

Dotfiler was meant to support symlinking individual files in dot-directories. However, this was dropped since it complicates things more than the value justifies; it should be straightforward (if tedious) to manually replicate Dotfiler’s functionality.

Managing specific files/directories inside a dot-directory requires a list of managed files to recover to a clean home-dir – which dir in a path is actually managed?

Use .gitignore or similar in your dot-files directory to exclude specific files/directories inside dot-directories from version control. (Remember you can use negated patterns.)