dfmpy 0.0.5

Another dotfiles manager.

dfm

Sometimes pronounced "diff-em-py" and is a small play on words. dfm is yet another Dot-Files Manager, but with robust features that can essentially "diff" the dotfiles actually installed versus the expected installed files. Hence the "diff-em".

dfm is not just another dotfiles manager, it supports multiple environments based on hostname, system type, or a combination of the two. It also ignores files/directories based on user defined globs which can be particularly useful if dfm has to traverse directories that have large I/O latencies (large directory inodes, too many files to stat, or even just network mounted directories, etc.).

Installation

Since dfm is registered on Pypi, you can install dfm through standard pip methods.

# Install locally as a normal user:
pip3 install --user --force --upgrade dfmpy

# Or install globally, as the all powerful root, for all users of the system:
sudo pip3 install --force --upgrade dfmpy

For more installation details, see INSTALLATION.md.

Config Files

To use dfm you must first dfm init which will create two files config files:

1. ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/dfm/config.ini
2. ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/dfm/ignore.globs

where ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME} is usually ~/.config. dfm uses xdgenvpy to get a handle on the dfm config directory.

config.ini is the main config file that tells it, among other things, where to find your dotfiles repository, where to install symlinks, and even how to manage identical filenames for different systems.

ignore.globs is a set of commonly ignored files and directories that one might never want synced with their dotfiles repository. For example, if you manage your dotfiles repository with Git then you would never want the .git directory symlinked to your destination directory. And vice versa, you should never add SSH keys (~/.ssh/id_*) to your dotfiles repo. The globs in this file tell dfm to just skip over the files or directories.

Usage

dfm makes use of Python's argparse library sub-command feature. This gives dfm multiple independent commands with their own set of CLI arguments.

File suffixes

To maintain dotfiles across multiple systems there needs to be a mechanism that allows for all the files to have the same name when install but not collide when they reside in the repository. To get around this dfm makes use of the system's hostname and system type appended to the file name.

For example, developers may want a ~/.vimrc in their home directory. But in the dotfiles repository we may want all vimrc files next to each other, i.e. in the same directory. dfm searches for a ## marker in a file to determine if the file has a system specific variant. Suppose our dotfiles repo looks like this:

cd ~/.files
tree
.
|-- .vimrc
|-- .vimrc##host1.Linux
|-- .vimrc##host2.Linux
|-- .vimrc##host2.Windows
|-- .vimrc##host3
`-- .vimrc##Windows

0 directories, 6 files

• .vimrc is the default vimrc file and will be the symlinked file if no other system specific file exists.

• .vimrc##host1.Linux is a system specific file that will only be symlinked if the hostname is "host1" and the system type is Linux.

• .vimrc##host2.Linux is a system specific file that will only be symlinked if the hostname is "host2" and the system type is Linux.

• .vimrc##host2.Windows is a system specific file that will only be symlinked if the hostname is "host2" and the system type is Windows.

• .vimrc##host3 is a system specific file that will only be symlinked if the hostname is "host3".

• .vimrc##Windows is a system specific file that will only be symlinked if the system type is Windows.

The hostname is determined by the return value from socket.gethostname(), and the system type is determined by the return value from platform.system().

Common arguments

dfm --help

-v is the verbose flag, which can be used multiple times. This flag controls which log level gets printed. The default log level is set to ERROR, which is lowered to WARNING when one -v flag is set. Multiple -v flags will lower the log level even further.

-i turns on interactive mode. dfm strives to be as filesystem safe as possible. By default it will not attempt to overwrite files. The interactive flag tells dfm to ask for permission when it performs a potentially dangerous operation.

-f turns on force mode. Again, dfm strives to be filesystem safe. The default commands will not overwrite files nor delete files without explicit user direction. While interactive mode can help with this, sometimes developers want to just force an operation and live with the consequences. Effectively, force mode short circuits interactive mode and assumes the developers accepts the operation that dfm is trying to perform (e.g. overwriting a file).

Install dfm

dfm init --help

Currently, dfm requires initialization after installation. We merely need to run the init command.

pip3 install --user --force --upgrade dfmpy
dfm init

Sync your dotfiles

dfm sync --help

Once installed and initialized, dfm will utilize the ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/dfm/config.ini config file when it needs to (re)sync your dotfiles. Per the default config.ini file, dfm assumes your dotfiles repo is initially located at ~/.local/share/dotfiles. If this is not the case, you need to modify your config.ini accordingly.

dfm sync -f

The sync command will use the dfm/config.ini file to determine where the dotfiles are installed and where the dotfiles repository is. It will then calculate a set of expected symlinks to files. dfm uses this set to traverse the installed dotfiles to determine what needs updating.

The sync command will create new symlinks to the expected files in the dotfiles repository. However, being filesystem safe, the sync command will not unlink existing symlinks, nor overwrite existing symlinks. Either interactive or force mode is required to make such changes.

Adding individual files

dfm add --help

Sometimes developers want to add a single file to their dotfiles repository. dfm has an option to add the file from their home directory directly into their dotfiles repository, then automatically symlink so a system specific file.

For example, let's say we needed to add our ~/.vimrc file to our dotfiles. The $HOME directory may look roughly like this:

ls -al ~
drwxr-xr-x 22 user user  4096 Nov 10 11:47 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root  4096 Apr 25  2019 ..
...
drwxr-xr-x 13 user user  4096 Jul  9 04:54 .cache
drwxr-xr-x 30 user user  4096 Nov 10 11:47 .config
drwx------  6 user user  4096 Nov 10 11:47 .local
-rw-------  1 user user    57 Oct 23 19:13 .vimrc
...

We can simply add the ~/.vimrc file, and the developer's home directory will look like this:

dfm add ~/.vimrc
ls -al ~
drwxr-xr-x 22 user user  4096 Nov 10 11:47 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root 4096 Apr 25  2019 ..
...
drwxr-xr-x 13 user user  4096 Jul  9 04:54 .cache
drwxr-xr-x 30 user user  4096 Nov 10 11:47 .config
drwx------  6 user user  4096 Nov 10 11:47 .local
lrwxrwxrwx  1 user user    28 Nov 10 11:47 .vimrc -> /home/user/.files/.vimrc##hostname.Linux
...

Under the hood, dfm is simply moving the file into the dotfiles repository with the most restrictive system specific name. Then it will create the symlink so that ~/.vimrc points to the repository file.

Listing the installed (eg synced) files

dfm list --help

dfm has a unique insight into your dotfiles. It knows how to ignore certain files, it knows what files should be symlinked to others, and it knows when there is a discrepancy with the installed files versus the dotfiles repo. As such, simple Bash ls -R or tree commands will not print just the dotfiles managed by dfm.

dfm has a list command that prints only the files dfm manages, the files it expects, and the files that might have broken symlinks. The file listing also adheres to dfm's log level conventions:

• broken symlinks (links to non-existent files) are logged at the CRITICAL level.
• stale symlinks (links to the wrong files) are logged at the ERROR level.
• not installed symlinks are logged at the WARNING level.
• and proper symlinks (links to the correct files) are logged at the INFO level.

Additionally, the list command has a --tree mode that changes the output into a directory tree structure, rather than a strict list.