dotdrop 0.26.0

Save your dotfiles once, deploy them everywhere

DOTDROP

Save your dotfiles once, deploy them everywhere

Dotdrop makes the management of dotfiles between different hosts easy. It allows to store your dotfiles on git and automagically deploy different versions of the same file on different setups.

It also allows to manage different sets of dotfiles. For example you can have a set of dotfiles for your home laptop and a different set for your office desktop. Those sets may overlap and different versions of the same dotfiles can be deployed on different predefined profiles. Or you may have a main set of dotfiles for your everyday’s host and a sub-set you only need to deploy to temporary hosts (cloud VM, etc) that may be using a slightly different version of some of the dotfiles.

Features:

• Sync once every dotfile on git for different usages

• Allow dotfiles templating by leveraging jinja2

• Dynamically generated dotfile contents with pre-defined variables

• Comparison between deployed and stored dotfiles

• Handling multiple profiles with different sets of dotfiles

• Easy import and update dotfiles

• Handle files and directories

• Support symlink of dotfiles

• Associate an action to the deployment of specific dotfiles

• Associate transformations for storing encrypted dotfiles

• Provide different solutions for handling dotfiles containing sensitive information

Check also the blog post, the example, the wiki or how people are using dotdrop for more.

Quick start:

mkdir dotfiles && cd dotfiles
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/deadc0de6/dotdrop.git
sudo pip3 install -r dotdrop/requirements.txt
./dotdrop/bootstrap.sh
./dotdrop.sh --help

A mirror of this repository is available on gitlab under https://gitlab.com/deadc0de6/dotdrop.

Why dotdrop ?

There exist many tools to manage dotfiles however not many allow to deploy different versions of the same dotfile on different hosts. Moreover dotdrop allows to specify the set of dotfiles that need to be deployed on a specific profile.

See the example for a concrete example on why dotdrop rocks.

---

Table of Contents

• Installation

• Getting started

• Documentation

• Example

Installation

There are multiple ways to install and use dotdrop. It is recommended to install dotdrop as a submodule to your dotfiles git tree. Having dotdrop as a submodule guarantees that anywhere you are cloning your dotfiles git tree from you’ll have dotdrop shipped with it.

Below instructions show how to install dotdrop as a submodule. For alternative installation instructions (with virtualenv, pypi, aur, snap, etc), see the wiki installation page.

Dotdrop is also available on * pypi: https://pypi.org/project/dotdrop/ * aur (stable): https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dotdrop/ * aur (git version): https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/dotdrop-git/ * snapcraft: https://snapcraft.io/dotdrop

As a submodule

The following will create a git repository for your dotfiles and keep dotdrop as a submodule:

$ mkdir dotfiles; cd dotfiles
$ git init
$ git submodule add https://github.com/deadc0de6/dotdrop.git
$ sudo pip3 install -r dotdrop/requirements.txt
$ ./dotdrop/bootstrap.sh
$ ./dotdrop.sh --help

For MacOS users, make sure to install realpath through homebrew (part of coreutils).

Using this solution will need you to work with dotdrop by using the generated script dotdrop.sh at the root of your dotfiles repository.

To ease the use of dotdrop, it is recommended to add an alias to it in your shell with the config file path, for example

alias dotdrop=<absolute-path-to-dotdrop.sh> --cfg=<path-to-your-config.yaml>'

For bash and zsh completion scripts see the related doc.

Getting started

If starting fresh, the import command of dotdrop allows to easily and quickly get a running setup.

Install dotdrop on one of your host and then import any dotfiles you want dotdrop to manage (be it a file or a directory):

$ dotdrop import ~/.vimrc ~/.xinitrc

Dotdrop does two things:

• Copy the dotfiles in the dotpath directory

• Create the entries in the config.yaml file

Commit and push your changes.

Then go to another host where your dotfiles need to be managed as well, clone the previously setup git tree and compare local dotfiles with the ones stored by dotdrop:

$ dotdrop list
$ dotdrop compare --profile=<other-host-profile>

Then adapt any dotfile using the template feature (if needed) and set a new profile for the current host by simply adding lines in the config files, for example:

...
profiles:
  host1:
    dotfiles:
    - f_vimrc
    - f_xinitrc
  host2:
    dotfiles:
    - f_vimrc
...

When done, you can install your dotfiles using

$ dotdrop install

That’s it, a single repository with all your dotfiles for your different hosts.

For more options see dotdrop --help and the wiki.

For easy deployment the default profile used by dotdrop reflects the hostname of the host on which it runs. It can be changed either with the -p --profile switch or by defining the DOTDROP_PROFILE environment variable.

The config file is per default config.yaml and can be changed either using the -c --cfg cli switch or by defining the DOTDROP_CONFIG environment variable.

Documentation

Dotdrop’s documentation is hosted on its wiki.

Example

Let’s consider two hosts:

• home: home computer with hostname home

• office: office computer with hostname office

The home computer is running awesomeWM and the office computer bspwm. The .xinitrc file will therefore be different while still sharing some lines. Dotdrop allows to store only one single .xinitrc but to deploy different versions depending on where it is run from.

The following file is the dotfile stored in dotdrop containing jinja2 directives for the deployment based on the profile used.

Dotfile <dotpath>/xinitrc:

#!/bin/bash

# load Xresources
userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
if [ -f "$userresources" ]; then
      xrdb -merge "$userresources" &
fi

# launch the wm
{%@@ if profile == "home" @@%}
exec awesome
{%@@ elif profile == "office" @@%}
exec bspwm
{%@@ endif @@%}

The if branch will define which part is deployed based on the hostname of the host on which dotdrop is run from.

And here’s how the config file looks like with this setup. Of course any combination of the dotfiles (different sets) can be done if more dotfiles have to be deployed.

config.yaml file:

config:
  backup: true
  create: true
  dotpath: dotfiles
dotfiles:
  f_xinitrc:
    dst: ~/.xinitrc
    src: xinitrc
profiles:
  home:
    dotfiles:
    - f_xinitrc
  office:
    dotfiles:
    - f_xinitrc

Installing the dotfiles (the --profile switch is not needed if the hostname matches the profile entry in the config file):

# on home computer
$ dotdrop install --profile=home

# on office computer
$ dotdrop install --profile=office

Comparing the dotfiles:

# on home computer
$ dotdrop compare

# on office computer
$ dotdrop compare

Contribution

If you are having trouble installing or using dotdrop, open an issue.

If you want to contribute, feel free to do a PR (please follow PEP8).

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 license.