write config files

This tool allows you to render templated config files and write them out.

This can be used to manage personal config files with different settings in different places (e.g. work/personal) or without committing secrets to a git repo.

getting started

You will need a file to configure the templates and a file to provide context variables. By default these are names templates.yaml and context.yaml, respectively. e.g:

templates

The root template directory is relative to the templates file. Each entry in the template_groups must be a group of templates that will be written to the output directory. All template files must be listed explicitly.

Templates may be written to a different name than the name of the template file by setting the destination attribute. The written files may be made executable by making is_executable true.

e.g:

root_template_dir: ./templates
template_groups:
-   output_dir: '~'
    templates:
    -   template: .editorconfig
    -   template: .zshrc
-   output_dir: ~/.config/
    templates:
    -   template: git/config
    -   template: git/ignore
-   output_dir: ~/.local/bin
    templates:
    -   template: my_script.py
        destination: my-script
        is_executable: true

context

This will be parsed from YAML into a plain dictionary and used as the template context. A context file be provided. If no context is needed, make it an empty dict:

{}

usage

write

Render the templates and write the output files.

usage: write-config-files write [-h] [-t TEMPLATES] [-c CONTEXT] [-f] [-d]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -t TEMPLATES, --templates TEMPLATES
                        path to config file (default: templates.yaml)
  -c CONTEXT, --context CONTEXT
                        path to context file (default: context.yaml)
  -f, --force           overwrite existing files
  -d, --dry-run         render templates but do not write files

diff

Show the diff between the current files and what would be written with write.

usage: write-config-files diff [-h] [-t TEMPLATES] [-c CONTEXT] [-p PAGER]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -t TEMPLATES, --templates TEMPLATES
                        path to config file (default: templates.yaml)
  -c CONTEXT, --context CONTEXT
                        path to context file (default: context.yaml)
  -p PAGER, --pager PAGER
                        the pager to use to display each diff (default: no pager)