dotfiles

Background

I originally set out with the simple approach of Managing my dotfiles as a git repository. This concept was stupid simple. Make $HOME a git repo, add * to the .gitignore so your git status is clean (no untracked files). Then git add -f files you wish to track. No aliases, no bare repo nonsense, just a simple git repo. This worked - very well.

The ONLY issue was that my entire $HOME directory was a git repo. A git status always had something to report. The git information displayed in the shell prompt always indicated I was on master with no changes. Occasionally I might get confused, wait, is this really a git repo or is this my dotfiles repo... I better git remote -v to see what repo I'm actually in.

Eventually this small issue festered and I started looking closer at the bare repo solutions. On the surface, they seemed more complicated, which is why I avoided them originally. eventually, two things became evident:

The initial clone is a bare clone, but we don't work on that bare repo. Immediately after the clone, we checkout a work tree.
We instruct git to checkout the work tree to a location outside the repo directory!. This is why the alias comes in - to associate the work tree with the git repo.

So, not so complicated afterall.

Setup

Requirements

curl
git

Installation

On a new system run this command:

curl -Lks https://raw.githubusercontent.com/erniedotson/dotfiles/master/.bin/install.sh | /bin/bash

This will attempt to:

clone the repo into ~/.dotfiles
checkout the files to $HOME
- If existing dotfiles are found, they will be copied to ~/.dotfiles-backup/
update ~/.bashrc and ~.zshrc files with dfgit alias.

Log out and back in for your new dotfiles to be loaded.

Tracking dotfiles

The git command will not work in your $HOME directory because it is not a git repo. An alias saves the day:

alias dfgit='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

Instead use the alias, dfgit, along with any git commands. For example, git status becomes dfgit status.

Sharing dotfiles across platforms

Line Endings

What is the best git config set up when you are using Linux and Windows?

git config --system core.autocrlf false

erniedotson/dotfiles