Introduction

git-dirs facilitates using a single directory as a Git work tree with multiple git dirs backing (different parts of) the work tree. git-dirs manages .git at the top of the work tree as a gitfile (see git-rev-parse(1), gitrepository-layout(5), gitglossary(7)), and repositories under .git-dirs/repo.d.

git-dirs is fairly minimalistic, its goal is to setup the .git link and the corresponding repository so unadorned git(1) will DTRT. Downside: since .git is no longer a plain directory at the root of the work tree, the ability to casually chdir into it or edit .git/config is lost.

git-dirs was conceived as a tool to ease use of Git for dotfiles in a home directory, a transparent and get-out-of-your-way alternative to vcsh but it is not tied to this use case. It simply works in its current working directory.

Usage

$ git dirs -h
usage: git dirs -h|--help
usage: git dirs activate REPO
usage: git dirs active [--full|--relative|--short]
usage: git dirs clone [--no-activate] [--origin NAME] URL [REPO]
usage: git dirs init [--no-activate] REPO
usage: git dirs list [--full|--relative|--short]

Dotfile management for Git

  Options:
    -h                Display this message
    --help            Display manual page
  Commands:
    activate          Associate $PWD with REPO
    active            Show the currently active repository
    clone             Clone URL into .git-dirs/repo.d/REPO
    init              Initialize a repository in .git-dirs/repo.d/REPO
    list              List repositories in .git-dirs/repo.d

Quickstart

One way to start versioning one's dotfiles is to init a repository for each independent fileset:

$ printf "%s\n" mail vim zsh | xargs -n 1 git dirs init --no-activate
initialized .git-dirs/repo.d/mail
initialized .git-dirs/repo.d/vim
initialized .git-dirs/repo.d/zsh

Then activate a repository and commit files into it:

$ git dirs activate mail
activated .git-dirs/repo.d/mail

$ git add .mail bin/mu

$ git status -suno
A  .mail/maildroprc
A  .mail/muttrc
A  bin/mu

$ git commit -q -m ...

And so on with remaining repositories:

$ git dirs activate vim
activated .git-dirs/repo.d/vim

$ git add .vim .vimrc

$ git status -suno
A  .vim/ftdetect/rfc.vim
A  .vim/syntax/rfc.vim
A  .vimrc

$ git commit -q -m ...

$ git dirs activate zsh
...

We can list the repositories:

$ git dirs list
mail
vim
zsh

And see which one is currently active:

$ git dirs active
zsh

Finally, git dirs clone clones a given URL or path, configures it for the non-default work tree path, and activates it (unless told not to):

$ git dirs clone git@example.org:somewhere/emacs.git
cloned .git-dirs/repo.d/emacs from git@example.org:somewhere/emacs.git
activated .git-dirs/repo.d/emacs

$ git checkout master
...

License

Published under the MIT license, see LICENSE file.