How to manage your dotfiles with git

Based on a Hacker News solution proposed by StreakyCobra

In his own words, some advantages of this approach are:

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.

Getting started

If you're starting from scratch, go ahead and…

• create a .dotfiles folder, which we'll use to track your dotfiles

git init --bare $HOME/.dotfiles

• create an alias dotfilesso you don't need to type it all over again

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

• set git status to hide untracked files

dotfiles config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

• add the alias to .bashrc (or .zshrc) so you can use it later

echo "alias dotfiles='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'" >> $HOME/.bashrc

Usage

Now you can use regular git commands such as:

dotfiles status
dotfiles add .vimrc
dotfiles commit -m "Add vimrc"
dotfiles add .bashrc
dotfiles commit -m "Add bashrc"
dotfiles push

Nice, right? Now if you're moving to a virgin system…

Setup environment in a new computer

Make sure to have git installed, then:

• clone your github repository

git clone --bare https://github.com/USERNAME/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

• define the alias in the current shell scope

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

• checkout the actual content from the git repository to your $HOME

dotfiles checkout

Note that if you already have some of the files you'll get an error message. You can either (1) delete them or (2) back them up somewhere else. It's up to you.

Awesome! You’re done.

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