Dotfiler

A tiny app for managing config files.

The strategy here is that you can gather all of your configuration files into a single directory and then symlink them into all the places they need to be. This tool handles the symlinking.

The advantage of this method is that we can more easily version-control our config files and keep them consistent from machine to machine.

Usage

There's little to no documentation set up for this tool. Have fun. For an extended example, check out how I use it.

Let's say you want to configure your bashrc from another folder. Let's call that other folder $HOME/dotfiles, and let's say the .bashrc typically lives in $HOME/.bashrc.

Move your $HOME/.bashrc file to $HOME/dotfiles/bashrc. Create a file called install.toml with the following contents.

[[link]]
file = "./bashrc"
link = "{{HOME}}/.bashrc"

Run the following command.

dotfiler -r $HOME/dotfiles

dotfiler will recursively search through that directory looking for install.toml files. When it finds one, it will create the specified link. Paths are relative to the install.toml files that contain them.

There are several convenient template variables available:

• HOME
• CACHE
• CONFIG
• DATA
• DATA_LOCAL

It's not hard to add more. I just haven't had a use case yet for anything other than HOME and CONFIG. These directories should work on Windows, macOS, and Linux. This functionality is currently provided by the directories-next library.