Dotfiles Repo

This is used to store my dotfiles to maintain consistency across devices and environments.

Table of Contents:

1. Install Dotfiles
2. Adding/Changing Dotfiles
3. Private Configs
4. Rationale and Philosophy
5. Lazygit
6. Credit

Install Dotfiles

To use this dotfiles configuration, follow the following steps:

# Clone as bare repo
git clone --bare https://github.com/EthanWarrick/dotfiles.git $HOME/.dotfiles

# Install (overwrite!!) dotfiles in home directory
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME checkout -f

# Don't show untracked files git status to avoid clutter
git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

The above commands will overwrite any conflicting files with those of this repo. To avoid this, you may remove the -f flag from the above git checkout command. The checkout will fail upon any conflicting files and show these files in the error message. You can backup these files and repeat the checkout command.

Adding/Changing Dotfiles

1. Source the following function (bash specific). This is already done if using the bash configuration provided in this repo.

   git() {
       if [ "$PWD" = "$HOME" ]; then
           command git --git-dir="$HOME/.dotfiles" --work-tree="$HOME" "$@"
       else
           command git "$@"
       fi
   }

2. Run git add <dotfile> from your home directory on the desired config file(s) that have been added or modified.

3. Commit the changes -- git commit.

Private Configs

Some dotfiles contain private or sensitive information that should not be publicly tracked. A method of separating these configurations is to put them in separate files to be referenced by an application's main config. These private configurations are included in this repo and denoted by having private in their filename. Private configs are included to avoid being a missing dependency (and potentially throwing an error) when an application's main configuration references them by name.

To avoid tracking changes (and secrets) added to these private config files, run the following command:

git update-index --skip-worktree <private-filename>

If a private config ever does need a tracked change, stop ignoring it by running the following command:

git update-index --no--skip-worktree <private-filename>

This method keeps any private config file present but empty in the repo. It will still be cloned, but ideally never edited despite containing local changes.

Rationale and Philosophy

The goal here is to store dotfiles in a way that they can easily be downloaded and installed to their proper locations. The way I have seen this done in the past is to create a repo containing all dotfiles and containing a script that creates symlinks to each file at the necessary location. I went with an alternate approach. If installed as shown above, the cloned repo is a bare repository with the work-tree set up to be your home directory. This allows dotfiles to be installed and tracked at their actual locations instead of some random directory. I like this more because it avoids creating a host of symlinks that can be tricky to interact with for some applications. It also doesn't require creating/updating/tracking a script or any extra tooling to create the necessary directories and symlinks on the host system.

Lazygit

Use lazygit to manage this dotfiles repo by aliasing it to the following function. This is already done if using the bash config provided by this repo. This function references the bare git repository if run from the home directory, and checks for an optional private lazygit config file.

lazygit ()
{
    config="$HOME/.config/lazygit/config.yml";
    if [ -f $HOME/.config/lazygit/private-config.yml ]; then
        config+=",$HOME/.config/lazygit/private-config.yml";
    fi;
    if [ "$PWD" = "$HOME" ]; then
        LG_CONFIG_FILE=$config lazygit --git-dir="$HOME/.dotfiles" --work-tree="$HOME" "$@";
    else
        LG_CONFIG_FILE=$config lazygit "$@";
    fi
}

Credit

The structure of this repo is based on the following tutorials:
https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles
https://gpanders.com/blog/managing-dotfiles-with-git/