A dotfile manager for pair-programmers and lazy people.
Project description
dfm
A dotfile manager for lazy people and pair programmers.
dfm doesn't require that the dotfiles in your repository start with dots though it handles either case equally well.
Table of Contents
Features
dfm supports these features that I was unable to find in other Dotfile Management solutions.
Multiple dotfile profiles
dfm's core feature is the idea of profiles. Profiles are simply a
collection of dotfiles that dfm manages and links in the $HOME
directory or configuration directories. This means that you can have
multiple profiles and overlap them.
This feature is hard to describe, so I will illustrate it's usefulness with two use cases:
The work profile
I use one laptop for work and personal projects in my dfm profiles I have my
personal profile chasinglogic which contains all my dotfiles for Emacs, git,
etc. and a "work" profile which only has a .gitconfig that has my work email
in it. So my profile directory looks like this:
profiles/
├── chasinglogic
│ ├── agignore
│ ├── bash
│ ├── bashrc
│ ├── gitconfig
│ ├── gnupg
│ ├── password-store
│ ├── pypirc
│ ├── spacemacs.d
│ └── tmux.conf
└── work
└── gitconfig
Since dfm when linking only overwrites the files which are in the new
profile, I can run dfm link work and still have access to my emacs
configuration but my gitconfig has been updated to use my work
email. Similarly when I leave work I just dfm link chasinglogic to
switch back.
See profile modules for an even better solution to this particular use case.
Pair programming
The original inspiration for this tool was pair programming with my
friend lionize. lionize has a dotfiles
repository so I can clone it using the git backend for dfm with dfm clone --name lionize https://github.com/lionize/dotfiles.
Now our profile directory looks like:
profiles/
├── chasinglogic
│ ├── .dfm.yml
│ ├── .git
│ ├── .gitignore
│ ├── agignore
│ ├── bash
│ ├── bashrc
│ ├── gitconfig
│ ├── gnupg
│ ├── password-store
│ ├── pypirc
│ ├── spacemacs.d
│ └── tmux.conf
├── lionize
│ ├── .agignore
│ ├── .git
│ ├── .gitconfig
│ ├── .gitignore_global
│ ├── .gitmessage
│ ├── .scripts
│ ├── .tmux.conf
│ ├── .vim
│ ├── .vimrc -> ./.vim/init.vim
│ └── .zshrc
└── work
├── .git
└── gitconfig
Now when I'm driving I simply dfm link chasinglogic and when passing back to
lionize he runs dfm link lionize and we don't have to mess with multiple
machines vice versa.
Profile modules
dfm supports profile modules which can be either additional dotfiles profiles as
accepted by the dfm clone command or can be any git repository such as
Spacemacs. You can get more info about
how to use them and configure them in Configuration
Pre and Post command hooks
dfm supports pre and post command hooks. that allows you to specify before and
after command scripts to run. For example, I use a profile module to keep
certain ssh keys in an encrypted git repository. Whenever I run the dfm sync command
I have hooks which fix the permissions of the keys and ssh-add them to my ssh
agent. You can read about how to write your own hooks in
Configuration
Respects $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
dfm respects dotfiles which exist in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory,
meaning if in your repository you have a folder named config or
.config it'll translate those into the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
directory automatically. Similarly when using dfm add if inside your
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME or $HOME/.configuration directories it'll add those to
the repository appropriately.
Skips relevant files
dfm by default will skip multiple relevant files.
- .git
dfm will skip the .git directory so your $HOME directory isn't
turned into a git repository.
- .gitignore
If you would like to store a global .gitignore file you can either omit the
leading dot (so just gitignore) or name the global one .ggitignore and dfm
will translate the name for you. Otherwise it assumes that .gitignore is the
gitignore for the profile's repository and so skips it.
- README
Want to make a README for your dotfiles? Go ahead! As long as the file name
starts with README dfm will ignore it. So README.txt README.md and
README.rst or whatever other permutations you can dream up all work.
- LICENSE
You should put a LICENSE on all code you put on the internet and some dotfiles /
configurations are actual code (See: Emacs). If you put a LICENSE in your
profile dfm will respect you being a good open source citizen and not clutter your
$HOME directory.
- .dfm.yml
This is a special dfm file used for hooks today and in the future for other ways
to extend dfm. As such dfm doesn't put it in your $HOME directory.
Custom mappings
The above ignores are implemented as a dfm feature called Mappings. You can write your own mappings to either skip, skip based on platform or translate files to different locations than dfm would normally place them. You can read how to configure your own mappings in Configuration
Encrypted Dotfiles
Using hooks and mappings you can integrate GPG with DFM to have an encrypted dotfiles repository.
If you add the following .dfm.yml to your repository per the
Configuration documentation:
---
mappings:
- match: '.*.gpg'
skip: true
hooks:
before_sync:
- interpreter: /bin/bash -c
script: |
echo "encrypting files..."
for file in $(find . -not -name '*.gpg' -not -name '.dfm.yml' -not -name '.gitignore' -not -path './.git/*'); do
echo "Encrypting $file to ${file/.gpg/}"
gpg --batch --yes --encrypt ${file/.gpg/}
done
after_sync:
- interpreter: /bin/bash -c
script: |
for file in $(git ls-files | grep -v .dfm.yml | grep -v .gitignore); do
gpg --batch --yes --decrypt -o ${file/.gpg/} $file
done
And the following .gitignore file:
*
!*/
!.gitignore
!.dfm.yml
!*.gpg
Then when running dfm sync DFM will run the gpg command to encrypt all your
files, then git will ignore all non-GPG encrypted files (due to the
.gitignore), and after syncing DFM will decrypt all the GPG encrypted files.
This all happens before linking, when you run dfm link DFM will ignore all gpg
encrypted files due to the mapping configuration. It will then only link the
unencrypted versions into your home directory.
Installation
Install from Release
dfm is available on PyPi and should be installed from there:
$ pip3 install dfm
dfm supports Python 3+.
Install from Source
Clone the repository and run make install:
git clone https://github.com/chasinglogic/dfm
cd dfm
make install
It's possible that for your system you will need to run the make command with sudo.
Usage
Usage:
dfm [options] <command> [<args>...]
dfm help
dfm sync
dfm link <profile>
Dotfile management written for pair programmers. Examples on getting
started with dfm are avialable at https://github.com/chasinglogic/dfm
Options:
-v, --verbose If provided print more logging info
--debug If provided print debug level logging info
-h, --help Print this help information
Commands:
help Print usage information about dfm commands
sync (s) Sync your dotfiles
add (a) Add the file to the current dotfile profile
clean (x) Clean dead symlinks
clone (c) Use git clone to download an existing profile
git (g) Run the given git command on the current profile
init (i) Create a new profile
link (l) Create links for a profile
list (ls) List available profiles
remove (rm) Remove a profile
run-hook (rh) Run dfm hooks without using normal commands
where (w) Prints the location of the current dotfile profile
See 'dfm help <command>' for more information on a specific command.
Quick start
Quick start (Existing dotfiles repository)
If you already have a dotfiles repository you can start by cloning it using the clone command.
SSH URLs will work as well.
dfm clone https://github.com/chasinglogic/dotfiles
If you're using GitHub you can shortcut the domain:
dfm clone chasinglogic/dotfiles
If you want to clone and link the dotfiles in one command:
dfm clone --link chasinglogic/dotfiles
You may have to use --overwrite as well if you have existing non-symlinked
versions of your dotfiles
Once you have multiple profiles you can switch between them using dfm link
dfm link some-other-profile
See the Usage Notes below for some quick info on what to expect from other dfm commands.
Quick Start (No existing dotfiles repository)
If you don't have a dotfiles repository the best place to start is with dfm init
dfm init my-new-profile
Then run dfm link to set it as the active profile, this is also how you switch
profiles
dfm link my-new-profile
Once that's done you can start adding your dotfiles
dfm add ~/.bashrc
Alternatively you can add multiple files at once
dfm add ~/.bashrc ~/.vimrc ~/.vim ~/.emacs.d
Then create your dotfiles repository on GitHub. Instructions for how to do that can be found here. Once that's done get the "clone" URL for your new repository and set it as origin for the profile:
Note: When creating the remote repository don't choose any options such as "initialize this repository with a README" otherwise git'll get cranky when you add the remote because of a recent git update and how it handles unrelated histories if you do don't worry the linked post explains how to get past it.
dfm git remote add origin <your clone URL>
Then simply run dfm sync to sync your dotfiles to the remote
dfm sync
Now you're done!
Configuration
dfm supports a .dfm.yml file in the root of your repository that
changes dfm's behavior when syncing and linking your profile. This
file will be ignored when doing a dfm link so won't end up in
your home directory. The .dfm.yml can be used to configure these
features:
Modules
Modules in dfm are sub profiles. They're git repositories that are cloned into a
a special directory: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules. They're shared across
profiles so if two dotfile profiles have the same module they'll share that
module.
The syntax for defining a minimum module is as follows:
modules:
- repository: git@github.com:chasinglogic/dotfiles
This would clone my dotfiles repository as a module into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules/chasinglogic. If I wanted to use a unique name or
some other folder name so it wouldn't be shared you can specify an additional
option name:
modules:
- repository: git@github.com:chasinglogic/dotfiles
name: chasinglogic-dotfiles
Which would instead clone into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules/chasinglogic-dotfiles. You can define multiple
modules:
modules:
- repository: git@github.com:chasinglogic/dotfiles
name: chasinglogic-dotfiles
- repository: git@github.com:lionize/dotfiles
Make sure that you specify a name if the resulting clone location as defined by git would conflict as we see here. Both of these would have been cloned into dotfiles which would cause the clone to fail for the second module if we didn't specify name for chasinglogic's dotfiles.
An additional use for modules is that of a git repository you want to clone but not link. An example use would be for downloading Spacemacs or any such community configuration like oh-my-zsh, etc.
modules:
- repo: git@github.com:syl20bnr/spacemacs
link: none
pull_only: true
location: ~/.emacs.d
Here we specify a few extra keys. There purpose should be self explanatory but if you're curious below is a detailed explanation of all keys that each module configuration supports.
Modules work just like any other dfm profile so if a module you're
pulling in has a .dfm.yml in it that will be loaded and executed
accordingly. Including pulling down any modules it defines.
Available keys
repo
Required, this is the git repository to clone for the module.
name
This changes the cloned name. This only has an effect if location isn't
provided. Normally a git repository would be cloned into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules and the resulting folder would be named whatever
git decides it should be based on the git URL. If this is provided it'll be
cloned into the modules directory with the specified name. This is useful if
multiple profiles use the same module.
location
If provided module will be cloned into the specified location. You can use the
~ bash expansion here to represent $HOME. No other expansions are available.
This option is useful for cloning community configurations like oh-my-zsh or
spacemacs.
link
Determines when to link the module. Link in this context means that it'll be
treated like a normal dotfile profile, so all files will go through the same
translation rules as a regular profile and be linked accordingly. Available
values are post, pre, and none. post is the default and means that the
module will be linked after the parent profile. "pre" means this will be linked
before the parent profile, use this if for instance you want to use most files
from this profile and override a few files with those from the parent file since
dfm will overwrite the links with the last one found. "none" means the module is
not a dotfiles profile and shouldn't be linked at all, an example being
community configuration repositories like oh-my-zsh or spacemacs.
pull_only
If set to true won't attempt to push any changes. It's important to
know that dfm always tries to push to origin master, so if you don't
have write access to the repository or don't want it to automatically
push to master then you should set this to true. This is useful for
community configuration repositories.
mappings
A list of file mappings as described below in Mappings. Modules do not inherit parent mappings, they do however inherit the default mappings as described in Skips Relevant Files
Mappings
Mappings are a way of defining custom file locations. To understand mappings one must understand dfm's default link behavior:
Default behavior
For an example let's say you have a file named my_config.txt in your
dotfile repository. dfm will try and translate that to a new location
of $HOME/.my_config.txt. It'll then create a symlink at that location
pointing to my_config.txt in your dotfile repository.
Using mappings
With mappings you can replace this behavior and make it so dfm will
link my_config wherever you wish. This is useful if you need to
store config files that are actually global. Such as configuration
files that would go into /etc/ or if you want to sync some files in
your repo but not link them.
Here is a simple example:
mappings:
- match: .config/some-dir
link_as_dir: true
- match: my_global_etc_files
target_dir: /etc/
- match: something_want_to_skip_but_sync
skip: true
- match: something_only_for_macos
target_os: "Darwin"
- match: some_file_for_mac_and_linux_only
target_os:
- "Linux"
- "Darwin"
- match: some_specific_translation_for_mac
dest: ~/.mac_os_dotfile
target_os:
- "Darwin"
Here dfm uses the match as a regular expression to match the file
paths in your dotfile repository. When it finds a path which matches
the regular expression it adds an alternative linking behavior. For
anything where skip is true it simply skips linking. For anything
with target_dir that value will override $HOME when linking. For
anything with a target_os value the file will only be linked if dfm
is being run on the given os.
Link as Dir Mappings
Above you can see a mapping using the link_as_dir option. When this is set to true
for a mapping the match: value will be used as a directory relative to the root of the
dotfile repo and will be linked as a directory. Normally DFM only links files, this can
cause issues with some types of configuration where you regularly generate files like
snippet tools. Consider the following dotfiles in a dotfile repository:
$REPO/.config/nvim
├── UltiSnips
│ ├── gitcommit.snippets
│ └── python.snippets
That would produce the following links in $HOME/.config/nvim:
$HOME/.config/nvim
├── UltiSnips
│ ├── gitcommit.snippets -> $HOME/.config/dfm/profiles/chasinglogic/.config/nvim/UltiSnips/gitcommit.snippets
│ └── python.snippets -> $HOME/.config/dfm/profiles/chasinglogic/.config/nvim/UltiSnips/python.snippets
Every time you used :UltiSnipsEdit to create a new snippet file type you'd have to
then remember to manually move that into your dotfile repository and re-run dfm link.
To solve this problem you can use the following mapping in your .dfm.yml you can
instead link UltiSnips the directory instead of it's files:
mappings:
- match: .config/nvim/UltiSnips
link_as_dir: true
Now DFM links the $HOME/.config/nvim/UltiSnips directory to the
$REPO/.config/nvim/UltiSnips:
$HOME/.config/nvim
├── UltiSnips -> $HOME/.config/dfm/profiles/chasinglogic/.config/nvim/UltiSnips
Available configuration
Mappings support the following configuration options:
match
Match is a regular expression used to match the file path of any files in your dotfile repository. This is used to determine if the custom linking behavior for a file should be used.
These are python style regular expressions and are matched using the
re.findall
method so are by default fuzzy matching.
skip
If provided the file/s will not be linked.
dest
The new full path to the file. This can be used to completely change a file's
name or put it in a wholly new location. This is more explicity than
target_dir and covers cases that target_dir is not suited for (for example
if a file is a dotfile on one OS but not on another.)
target_dir
Where to link the file to. The ~ expansion for $HOME is supported
here but no other expansions are available. It is worth noting that if
you're using ~ in your target_dir then you should probably just
create the directory structure in your git repo.
target_os
A string or list of strings matching the OS's to link this file
on. A non-exhaustive list of common values are: Linux, Darwin, or
Windows. This matches the string returned by Python's
platform.system()
function.
Hooks
Hooks in dfm are used for those few extra tasks that you need to do whenever your dotfiles are synced or linked.
An example from my personal dotfiles is running an Ansible playbook
whenever I sync my dotfiles. To accomplish this I wrote an
after_sync hook as follows:
hooks:
after_sync:
- ansible-playbook ansible/dev-mac.yml
Now whenever I sync my dotfiles Ansible will run my dev-mac playbook to make
sure that my packages etc are also in sync!
The hooks option is just a YAML map which supports the following keys:
after_link, before_link, after_sync, and before_sync. The
values of any of those keys is a YAML list of strings which will be
executed in a shell via /bin/sh -c '$YOUR COMMAND'. An example would
be:
hooks:
after_link:
- ls -l
- whoami
- echo "All done!"
All commands are ran with a working directory of your dotfile
repository and the current process environment is passed down to the
process so you can use $HOME etc environment variables in your
commands.
By default the comamnds will run with the interpreter /bin/sh -c. So the
expanded comamnd line for the first hook above would be:
/bin/sh -c 'ls -l'
If you want to use a different interpreter you can use instead use this hook format:
hooks:
after_link:
- interpreter: python -c
script: |
print("hello world from Python")
You may want to do this in cases where you need complex logic (like that which should live in a Python script) or for example on Debian based systems which use dash instead of bash as the /bin/sh interpreter and so have a very limited expansion feature set.
Contributing
- Fork it!
- Create your feature branch:
git checkout -b my-new-feature - Commit your changes:
git commit -am 'Add some feature' - Push to the branch:
git push origin my-new-feature - :fire: Submit a pull request :D :fire:
All pull requests should go to the develop branch not master. Thanks!
License
This code is distributed under the GNU General Public License
Copyright (C) 2018 Mathew Robinson
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
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