How to manage dotfiles

Initial Git repository setup

1. Init the bare git repository in a "dot" folder of your $HOME

git init --bare $HOME/.myconf

2. Define the config alias

alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME'

3. Set the flag showUntrackedFiles to no on this specific config repository

config config status.showUntrackedFiles no

Then any file within the home folder can be versioned with normal commands like:

config status
config add .zsh
config commit -m "Add zsh config"
config add .config/starship.toml
config commit -m "Add starship prompt config"
config push

No extra tooling, no symlinks, files are tracked on a version control system, you can use different branches for different computers, you can replicate you configuration easily on new installation.

Add a remote repository (e.g. GitHub)

config remote add origin https://github.com/ChrisTTian667/dotfiles.git

config push -u origin main

Replicate your configuration on a new machine

Replicate your home directory on a new machine with an empty user directory using the following command:

git clone --separate-git-dir=~/.myconf https://github.com/ChrisTTian667/dotfiles.git ~

Replicate your configuration on a used machine

If the home directory is not empty clone the repositories working directory into a temporary directory first and then delete that directory.

git clone --separate-git-dir=$HOME/.myconf https://github.com/ChrisTTian667/dotfiles.git $HOME/myconf-tmp

cp ~/myconf-tmp/.gitmodules ~  # If you use Git submodules

rm -r ~/myconf-tmp/

alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME'

and then proceed as before.

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