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Dotfiles

User-specific application configuration is traditionally stored in so called dotfiles (files whose filename starts with a dot). It is common practice to track dotfiles with a version control system such as Git to keep track of changes and synchronize dotfiles across various hosts. There are various approaches to managing your dotfiles (e.g. directly tracking dotfiles in the home directory v.s. storing them in a subdirectory and symlinking/copying/generating files with a shell script or a dedicated tool).

Note: this is not meant to configure files that are outside your home directory, use Ansible for that use case.

Tracking dotfiles directly with Git

The benefit of tracking dotfiles directly with Git is that it only requires Git and does not involve symlinks. The disadvantage is that host-specific configuration generally requires merging changes into multiple branches.

$ git init --bare ~/.dotfiles
$ alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'
$ config config status.showUntrackedFiles no

Host-specific configuration

A common problem with synchronizing dotfiles across various machines is host-specific configuration.

With Git this can be solved by maintaining a main branch for all shared configuration, while each individual machine has a machine-specific branch checked out. Host-specific configuration can be committed to the machine-specific branch; when shared configuration is modified in the master branch, the per-machine branches need to be rebased on top of the updated master.

If you find rebasing Git branches too cumbersome, you may want to use a tool that supports file grouping, or if even greater flexibility is desired, a tool that does processing.

Using Ansible to manage the dotfiles

Ansible gives you a lot of freedom on how to configure complex devices, and I've use it for a while, creating my own roles for each application with tests, it was beautiful to see.

It wasn't so pleasant to use or maintain because:

  • Every time you update something you need to:

  • Change the files manually until you get the new state of the files

  • Copy the files to the ansible-playbook repo
  • Apply the changes

Alternatively you can do the changes directly on the playbook repo, but then you'd need to run the apply many more times, and it's slow, so in the end you don't do it.

  • If you want to try a new tool but you're not sure you want it either you add it to the playbook and then remove it (waste of time), or play with the tool and then once your finished add it to the playbook. This last approach didn't work for me. It's like writing the docs after you've finished coding, you just don't do it, you don't have energy left and go to the next thing.

  • Most of the applications that use dotfiles are similarly configured, so ansible is an overkill for them. dotfiles tools are much better because you'd spend less time configuring it and the result is the same.

Tools

Name Written in File grouping Processing Stars
chezmoi Go directory-based Go templates 8.2k
dot-templater Rust directory-based custom syntax
dotdrop Python configuration file Jinja2 1.5k
dotfiles Python No No 555
Dots Python directory-based custom append points 264
Mackup Python automatic per application No 12.8k
dotter Rust configuration file Handlebars
dt-cli Rust configuration file Handlebars
mir.qualia Python No custom blocks

Where:

  • File grouping: How configuration files can be grouped to configuration groups (also called profiles or packages).
  • Processing: Some tools process configuration files to allow them to be customized depending on the host.

A quick look up shows that:

  • chezmoi looks like the best option.
  • dotdrop looks like the second best option.
  • dotfiles is unmaintained.
  • dots: is maintained but migrated to go
  • mackup: Looks like it's built for the cloud and it needs to support your application?

I think I'll give chezmoi a try.