Jorisvandijk.com

Living on Linux

Revamped: Managing dotfiles

In a previous post I discussed how I maintained my dotfiles. I've since rethought the process and decided on another way of handling this.

First, if you're unaware what dotfiles are, I've explained them as such before:

...dotfiles are the configuration files used on your Linux system. They are usually denoted with a dot/period in front of them, which makes them invisible. Because of this character these configuration files are knows as dotfiles.

Previous system

The old way of doing things involved moving the dotfiles I wanted to backup into a single folder, which was a git repository, and linking to them with a symlink from the original location of said dotfile. While this worked, I don't really care for symlinks and it felt untidy to me.

New system

So here's the new plan: Leave everything in its place. Create an empty git repository directory on my system and when the time comes to back everything up, just copy all the dotfiles to this folder, run the git commands and delete the copies of these files. Obviously I am not going to do this manually, a script will do this for me. This script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

#	Dotfiles 3.1
#	Manage dotfiles with a bash script
#	Dependencies: git
#
#	By Joris van Dijk | Jorisvandijk.com 
#	Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0

# Locations
dotfiles_repo=~/.dotfiles
dotfiles_list=~/.bin/Dotfiles-list

# Script
cd $dotfiles_repo

while read -r dotfile; do
  if [[ -f $dotfile ]]; then
    cp --parents $dotfile $dotfiles_repo
  elif [[ -d $dotfile ]]; then
    cp --parents -r $dotfile $dotfiles_repo
  fi
done < $dotfiles_list

git add -A

if [[ -n $(git status -s) ]]; then

  git status
  
  read -p "Enter a commit message: " commit_message

  git commit -m "$commit_message"
  git push origin main
fi

# Cleanup
find $dotfiles_repo -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -not -name ".git" -not -name ".gitignore" -exec rm -rf {} \;

Using this script

  1. Create a git repository on your favorite git host.
  2. Clone this repository to your system, creating a directory. This directory should be set as dotfiles_repo in the script under # Locations. I named mine .dotfiles and stored it in my home directory.
  3. Create a file which will house the locations of the dotfiles you want to back up. One dotfile, or complete directory per line. Mine looks like this:
/home/joris/.config/bspwm
/home/joris/.config/dunst
/home/joris/.config/feh
/home/joris/.config/gtk-3.0
/home/joris/.config/kitty
/home/joris/.config/micro
/home/joris/.config/mpv
/home/joris/.config/newsboat
/home/joris/.config/parcellite
/home/joris/.config/picom
/home/joris/.config/sxhkd
/home/joris/.icons
/home/joris/.local/share/applications/microlaunch.desktop
/home/joris/.themes
/home/joris/.bin
/home/joris/.bashrc
/home/joris/.bash_profile
/home/joris/.Xresources
/home/joris/.mozilla/firefox/17yhl6to.default-release/chrome
/etc/pacman.conf
/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
/etc/modprobe.d/nobeep.conf

As you can see I am not only backing up dotfiles from my home directory, but also files from root.

  1. Save the file somewhere on your system and enter its location in the script after dotfiles_list under # Locations. Mine is at ~/.bin/Dotfiles-list.

  2. Set up a .gitignore file to make sure some stuff does not get backed up. For example, Micro keeps a buffer, history and backups in its .config location. And while I do want to back up my Micro settings, I do not want to back up these temporary files. I therefor add a .gitignore file to the repository directory (.dotfiles) with the following content:

home/joris/.config/micro/buffers
home/joris/.config/micro/history
home/joris/.config/micro/backups

And that's it. Next time you want to back up your dotfiles, you can just run the script. It will grab a copy of all the files you listed and plonk those into the directory you specified. It will then git add them, ask for a commit message and push the files to git. It will then clean up the directory by deleting all the copied files, this way you don't have duplicates on your system.

It will also maintain the directory structure, which results in a very organized git repository online, as you can see when looking at mine. You'll also find the most up to date version of the script here. It's under /home/joris/.bin/.