Managing Dotfiles

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Computers
#dotbot#dotfiles

How I backup, restore and sync preferences and settings across computers.

Recently, I upgraded my Macbook at work but had to spend a few hours setting everything up again from scratch. This meant switching back and forth between both machines when the newer one was missing something I needed.

The weekend came around and I started exploring the different dotfile options available. GitHub has a curated list of dotfile tools I explored and eventually came to an approach I liked.

Things that I already I wanted to do were:

  1. Backup to Git
  2. Support for Mac and Linux
  3. No dependencies e.g. Python-based tool
  4. Ability to backup other things like npm, pip, brew

But the biggest thing I had to figure out was it better to copy or symlink the dotfiles...

Copying files vs Symlinking files

My first approach was 'copying' the files, as in every time there's a backup/restore, the files will be copied from the repository to their destination. There are some downsides to this:

  1. The repo is not always up to date
  2. Accidental deletion if 'restore' is run instead of 'backup'
  3. No constant 'single source of truth'

Symlinking on the other hand are like shortcuts/aliases to the original file. The downsides of symlinking on the other hand:

  1. Some applications may not like that files are links
  2. Moving symlinks may be troublesome i.e. the application does a migration

After trying both solutions, I decided on symlinks. The reason: I did the accidental deletion instead of a backup (downside #2)

Dotbot

After going through the curated list of dotfile tools, I landed on Dotbot by Anish Athalye.

Dotbot makes installing your dotfiles as easy as git clone $url && cd dotfiles && ./install, even on a freshly installed system!

Dotbot met all my requirements:

  1. Can be backed up to a Git repository. In fact, Dotbot is installed as a gitmodule so it can be easily updated, following the single source of truth philosophy
  2. After cloning my repo, I only have to run the install script to set everything up. Everything is managed in a single file
  3. It's a bash script without any other dependencies besides git and bash
  4. Other than symlinking dotfiles, it can also execute commands to trigger other custom scripts.

Custom scripts

Within the dotbot configuration, a shell section can be configured to specify commands to be executed. I use this for:

  • Installing oh-my-zsh
  • Installing brew and brew/cask packages
  • Installing pip modules
  • Installing npm packages
  • Installing Vundle and its plugins

But before they can be installed, they need to be backed up. For that, I have written a backup script that triggers each of the above. It is not ideal but it's the only way this can be done. Set this to a cron schedule and you'll get a somewhat automated backup for them.