I’m looking for recommendations for a dotfile manager - there are so many out there I’ve got a bit of options paralysis!
I’d like a system that can backup all my dotfiles - with version management - and, if I nuked my home directory, could restore them all for me with a simple command.
Thanks in advance for you suggestions!
You guys manage your dot files? Huh!
Isn’t every reinstall an opportunity for changes?
You took the words right out of my mouth!
I version them with Git.
Git and a script file that’s basically just a ton of ln - s commands
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever found myself wanting more
I do basically the same, but using GNU Stow instead of doing the ln myself
I did. I wanted more. I wanted
ln -sf.
Home-manager on NixOs. It handles more than just dotfiles, as it also manages installed programs.
It works outside of NixOS too! Just need to have the nix package manager installed.
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Just so it’s clear for everybody: Nix is a programming language, build system, and package manager. NixOS is a Linux distro built with (and upon) Nix. Home Manager is a dotfile and home management tool using Nix, allowing control of dotfiles, but also per-user software, systemd services, and more. You can use Home Manager in any distro, not just NixOS (but you do need to install Nix).
Here’s my example (Github mirror). It stores everything from my custom packages (like GIMP 2.99, which isn’t yet packaged in nixpkgs, or a custom virtiofsd to workaround an upstream bug caused by switching from the old C to the new Rust implementation), to my fish, sway, rofi, mpv configs, to my entire server setup, including Gitea, Nextcloud, Keycloak, Mumble, mailserver and Matrix server with some bots and bridges (I recently migrated from an x86_64 to a arm64 board and the only post-install setup I had to do was copy /var), to my router’s nftables rules.
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I host it on an Arm SBC lying in the closet, specifically Radxa Rock 5A (well, the dotfiles mention that much). That said, you don’t need your VPS service to offer NixOS provisioning, you can just use nixos-infect
I just use Git for my nixos config files.
I didn’t even know that was a thing, I just keep it in a git repo
I’m extremely happy with chezmoi. It’s very simple to use, but when you need more advanced features, it has them. It can do templates, ignoring and other stuff allowing you to easily manage dotfiles on multiple machines or even multiple operating systems (like windows on PC, Linux on laptop). Here is a comparison table of some dotfiles manager (it’s on chezmoi’s website, so it may be biased) Also here are my dotfiles (as a Linux user, I cannot resist the urge to share my dotfiles whenever I have the opportunity)
Chezmoi user here, love it.
I used yadm for a while and liked it. It is a git wrapper that makes git’ing your home folder for config files less messy
Now I don’t care so much for keeping settings anymore and use mainly vanilla settings, therefore I stopped using it
Second this, works great for multiple OSs as well, Linux and OSX in the same repo.
Git
cp -rto an external drive. Andcp -rback in case something goes wrong.I know, it’s boring and no way “modern”. But hey, it works and it does not require internet access!
NixOS + home-manager
same
a git repository configured to ignore basically everything except the dotfiles. For my sway config I load configs from a symlinked folder, which points to a different config depending on the machine being configured.
home-manager. a divine tool for
maniacsNix users that lets you do declarative dotfile managementnuking your home directory
Imho, in that case, you should look int a more proper backup strategy to restore all your files, not just your configs.
Thanks - yes I do have that, but I also wanted something specific to my dotfiles to make management and restoration a bit easier.
I have a vorta backup, running on a regular basis for my home dir which has GBs of data.
Mounting and restoring files is literally a matter of seconds.
But if you want something that you can easily take with you, you can go with a symlink/git approach:
- have a folder “configs”
- move all your dotfiles thst have NO sensitive data like credentials into that folder
- symlink them into their proper place
- use GIT to track them and push them to a git repo
Once you need them somewhere else, it’s just a
git pullaway… easy as that.What I dislike about existing solutions, is they come with their own binaries, conventions, and stuff, but basically do almost the same… this is the “raw way” that will hold up on any system, and almost all of them have git.
Or at the very least partition
~as btrfs/zfs and do regular snapshots. The downside is, of course, that a rollback won’t just roll back the dotfiles. But I guess if the scenario is “nuking [the] home directory” then that’s probably not an issue.
I’ve tried several dotfile managers, but after adding my files I interact with them so infrequently I forget how to use them.
The thing which finally stuck is this method from Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles
Your entire home directory is a bare git repo which ignores untracked files. It’s just plain git so there is no additional tool to learn or forget.
I’ve put my vim plugins as git submodules so they’re easily and efficiently tracked and updated too.
I used to use this but nowadays I prefer the single, declarative file approach of Guix Home and Home Manager.
Git, GNU Stow, and a custom bash script.
