🛠️ dotfiles

🏠 Personal dotfiles for Linux and Windows OS.

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Create ~/dotfiles folder.

mkdir ~/dotfiles

Run git command to create git bare repository.

# initialize git bare repo in ~/dotfiles
git init --bare

Add alias to .bashrc,.zsh or any other terminal app you use.

# Linux/Unix
echo "alias config='git --git-dir=$HOME/dotfiles --work-tree=$HOME'" >> $HOME/.bashrc

• Add that your source repository ignores the folder where you'll clone it, so that you don't create weird recursion problems:

# Create this .gitignore in `$HOME` 
echo "dotfiles" >> .gitignore

Windows

To make custom PowerShell aliases persistent, you should add them to your PowerShell profile. Here's how to do it:

⚡ Note: Open PowerShell as adminstrator.

1. First, check if you already have a PowerShell profile:

Test-Path $PROFILE

2. If it returns False, create a new profile (returns true then follow skip this step):

New-Item -Path $PROFILE -Type File -Force

3. Open your PowerShell profile in a text editor (like vim):

notepad $PROFILE

4. Add your custom aliases to the profile file. For example:

function config {
    git --git-dir="$HOME\dotfiles" --work-tree="$HOME" $args
}

5. Save the file and close the editor.

6. Reload your PowerShell profile:

. $PROFILE

Now you can use config in PowerShell just like you would use config in Linux/Unix. For example:

config status
config add .bashrc
config commit -m "Update .bashrc"

• Run command to config Untrack file in git

config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Installing your dotfiles onto a new system (or migrate to this setup)

If you already store your configuration/dotfiles in a Git repository, on a new system you can migrate to this setup with the following steps:

• Before the installation make sure you have committed the alias to your .bashrc, .zsh and powershell:

# Linux/Unix
alias dotfiles='git --git-dir=$HOME/dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

# Windows PowerShell
function config {
    git --git-dir="$HOME\dotfiles" --work-tree="$HOME" $args
}

• Add that your source repository ignores the folder where you'll clone it, so that you don't create weird recursion problems:

# Create this .gitignore in `$HOME` 
echo "dotfiles" >> .gitignore

• Now clone your dotfiles into a bare repository in a "dotfiles" folder of your $HOME:

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

• Define the alias in the current shell scope:

alias config='git --git-dir=$HOME/dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

• Checkout the actual content from the bare repository to your $HOME:

config checkout

• The step above might fail with a message like:

error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by checkout:
    .bashrc
    .gitignore
Please move or remove them before you can switch branches.
Aborting

This is because of $HOME folder might already have some stock configuration files that Git would overwrite. The solution is simple: back up the files if you care about them, and remove them if you don't care. I provide you with a possible rough shortcut to move all the offending files automatically to a backup folder:

mkdir -p .config-backup && \
config checkout 2>&1 | egrep "\s+\." | awk {'print $1'} | \
xargs -I{} mv {} .config-backup/{}

• Re-run the checkout if you had problems:

config checkout

• Set the flag showUntrackedFiles to no on this specific (local) repository:

config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

• You're done, from now on you can now type config commands to add and update your dotfiles:

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

Create a script

Again as a shortcut not to have to remember all these steps on any new machine you want to setup, you can create a simple script, store it as a GitHub snippet, create a short URL for it and call it like this:

curl -Lks <Github-snippet-link> | /bin/bash

Script code

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

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

mkdir -p .config-backup
config checkout
if [ $? = 0 ]; then
  echo "Checked out dotfiles.";
  else
    echo "Backing up pre-existing dotfiles.";
    config checkout 2>&1 | egrep "\s+\." | awk {'print $1'} | xargs -I{} mv {} .config-backup/{}
fi;
config checkout
config config status.showUntrackedFiles no