I felt frustrated with the example files and documentation. Despite Dotter being an excellent and user-friendly software that should typically take 10 minutes to set up, the lack of a minimalist example led to issues. Specifically, an empty source folder preventing symlink creation made me mistakenly believe there was a Windows permission problem, wasting considerable time.
Proposed Solution
Optimize the documentation with a clear, minimal example.
Directory Structure
dotfiles
│
├── .dotter
│ ├── cache.toml
│ ├── global.toml
│ ├── local.toml
│ └── windows.toml
│
├── source_path
│ └── not_be_empty_path.file # This is a file. Deployment fails if empty.
│
└── source_file
Run dotter deploy in the root directory. Note that dotter deploy -d will fail.
Dotter Configuration Guide
Problem Statement
I felt frustrated with the example files and documentation. Despite Dotter being an excellent and user-friendly software that should typically take 10 minutes to set up, the lack of a minimalist example led to issues. Specifically, an empty source folder preventing symlink creation made me mistakenly believe there was a Windows permission problem, wasting considerable time.
Proposed Solution
Optimize the documentation with a clear, minimal example.
Directory Structure
Run
dotter deploy
in the root directory. Note thatdotter deploy -d
will fail.Configuration Files
global.toml
Note: I intentionally didn't write package_name_2. If there are no dependencies, you can omit writing them all.
local.toml
windows.toml
Important Notes
source_path
directory must not be empty. The presence ofnot_be_empty_path.file
is crucial for successful deployment.This guide aims to provide a clear, minimal example to help users avoid common pitfalls and quickly set up Dotter on Windows systems.