Save your dotfiles once, deploy them everywhere
Dotdrop makes the management of dotfiles between different hosts easy. It allows you to store your dotfiles in 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 using different predefined profiles. Or you may have a main set of dotfiles for your everyday host and a subset 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:
Check the example, the documentation or how people are using dotdrop for more.
Quick start:
## using dotdrop as a submodule
mkdir dotfiles && cd dotfiles
git init
git submodule add https://github.com/deadc0de6/dotdrop.git
pip3 install -r dotdrop/requirements.txt --user
./dotdrop/bootstrap.sh
./dotdrop.sh --help
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 for a specific profile.
See the example for a concrete example of why dotdrop rocks.
Table of Contents
See the installation instructions.
Dotdrop is available on:
Create a new repository to store your dotfiles with dotdrop. Init or clone that new repository and install dotdrop.
Then import any dotfiles (files or directories) you want to manage with dotdrop.
You can either use the default profile (which resolves to the hostname of the host
you are running dotdrop on) or provide it explicitly using the switch -p
/--profile
.
Import dotfiles on host home:
$ dotdrop import ~/.vimrc ~/.xinitrc ~/.config/polybar
Dotdrop does two things:
config.yaml
, defaults to dotfiles)config.yaml
file
(in the dotfiles
and profiles
entries)Your config file will look like something similar to this:
config:
backup: true
banner: true
create: true
dotpath: dotfiles
ignoreempty: false
keepdot: false
longkey: false
showdiff: false
workdir: ~/.config/dotdrop
dotfiles:
d_polybar:
dst: ~/.config/polybar
src: config/polybar
f_vimrc:
dst: ~/.vimrc
src: vimrc
f_xinitrc:
dst: ~/.xinitrc
src: xinitrc
profiles:
home:
dotfiles:
- f_vimrc
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
For a description of the different fields and their use, see the config doc.
Commit and push your changes with git.
Then go to another host where your dotfiles need to be managed as well, clone the previously set up repository, and compare the local dotfiles with the ones stored in dotdrop:
$ dotdrop compare --profile=home
Now you might want to adapt the config.yaml
file to your liking on
that second host. Let's say, for example, that you only want d_polybar
and
f_xinitrc
to be deployed on that second host. You would then change your config
to something like this (assuming that the second host's hostname is office):
…
profiles:
home:
dotfiles:
- f_vimrc
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
office:
dotfiles:
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
Then adapt any dotfile using the templating feature (if needed). For example, you might want different fonts sizes in Polybar for each host.
Edit <dotpath>/config/polybar/config
:
…
{%@@ if profile == "home" @@%}
font0 = sans:size=10;0
{%@@ elif profile == "office" @@%}
font0 = sans:size=14;0
{%@@ endif @@%}
font1 = "Material Design Icons:style=Regular:size=14;0"
font2 = "unifont:size=6;0"
…
You also want to have the correct interface set on the wireless network in the Polybar config.
Add a variable
to the config file (In the below example, home gets the default wlan0
value for
the variable wifi
while office gets wlp2s0
):
…
variables:
wifi: "wlan0"
…
profiles:
home:
dotfiles:
- f_vimrc
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
office:
dotfiles:
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
variables:
wifi: "wlp2s0"
Then you can adapt the Polybar config file so that the
variable wifi
gets correctly replaced during installation:
[module/wireless-network]
type = internal/network
interface = {{@@ wifi @@}}
Also, the home computer is running awesomeWM,
and the office computer bspwm.
The ~/.xinitrc
file will therefore be different while still sharing some lines.
Edit <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 @@%}
Finally you want everything installed with the office profile to be logged; you thus add an action to the config file:
…
actions:
loginstall: "echo {{@@ _dotfile_abs_src @@}} installed to {{@@ _dotfile_abs_dst @@}} >> {0}"
…
profiles:
home:
dotfiles:
- f_vimrc
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
office:
dotfiles:
- f_xinitrc
- d_polybar
variables:
wifi: "wlp2s0"
actions:
- loginstall "/tmp/dotdrop-installation.log"
When done, you can install your dotfiles using:
$ dotdrop install
If you are unsure, you can always run dotdrop compare
to see
how your local dotfiles would be updated by dotdrop before running
install
or you could run install with --dry
.
That's it, a single repository with all your dotfiles for your different hosts.
For more, see the docs:
Dotdrop's documentation is hosted on Read the Docs.
If you like dotdrop, buy me a coffee.
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). Have a look at the contribution guidelines.
This project is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 license.