This template helps create a dotfiles repository. There are many ways to create a
dotfiles repository, but the way this one works is by having a "bootstrap" script that
will add registered files from this repository to your home directory. Files are
registered if they are in either registered/ or registered-OS/, where OS
is your operating system. This prevents files in this repository that aren't part of
your tracked dotfiles from being added.
On Linux, this will create symlinks for each of the registered dotfiles. This allows you to edit the file and have the changes be "automatically" applied. On Windows, unfortunately, this will copy the files instead of creating symlinks, meaning that changes to one file won't be synchronized with the other.
You can register a new dotfile to be tracked by this repository by calling the
appropriate register* script along with the file or directory that you want to
register.
./register.sh ~/.gitconfig
./register-linux.sh ~/.config/nvim/After using this template to create a repository called "dotfiles", clone that repository. Then, there are a few ways to "install" these scripts. They include
- Adding your repository to
$PATH - Making aliases or symlinks (
ln -s path/to/dotfiles/register.sh ~/.local/bin/dotfiles-register)
Also, feel free to modify any of the scripts or this README.md once you've cloned
your new dotfiles repository. It is, after all, your repository.
On Windows, the implementation is done by batch files (the *.cmd files) calling
PowerShell scripts (the *.ps1 files). Unfortunately, this may result in the
PowerShell scripts not getting called due to an execution policy error. Read the error
message and decide for yourself what the appropriate course of action should be.