Gdot - Gerry's Dot Files

I'm giving this method a shot.

TLDR:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gplusplus314/gdot/main/.gscripts/unix/init_repo.sh | /bin/bash

This will copy all existing dotfiles that would otherwise be overwritten into ~/.gdot-backup/, then copy all dotfiles from the repo into place. This is done via the magic of abusing Git's ability to have a repo in another directory. Pretty nifty.

Then just use the gdot command as if it's Git. It really is just an aliased Git, but with command line arguments automagically baked in. The above script already ignores untracked files, and since the actual Git repo is in ~/.gdot, the home directory doesn't show as a Git repo at the command line prompt in any way. No noise. Yay!

Careful when adding files. It's best to add one small folder or even individual files at a time. Just use gdot add foobar. To conveniently add unstaged changes for tracked files, use gdot add -u.

MacOS

To install everything, run the bootstrap_macos.sh script. Keep in mind that it can take a while and will require human interaction to answer some questions.

./.gscripts/macos/bootstrap_macos.sh

Time Machine tweak script

Time Machine is "too easy" and only allows you to exclude folders, not explicitly include them. For a development machine, this is terrible. So this script emulates inclusionary behavior by taking a list of home-directory level directories that you do want to backup, then it automatically excludes everything else. Edit the gtimemachineexclusions script:

vi ~/.gscripts/macos/gtimemachineexclusions

and then run it:

~/.gscripts/macos/gtimemachineexclusions

Use NeoVim as a system-wide text editor

Right click a file in Finder and go to open with -> other. Navigate to the home directory, then use keyboard shortcut shift+cmd+. to show hidden files. Then navigate to ~/.gscripts/macos/automator and select NeoVim.app.