Setup dotbot for dotfiles management

[jankovidakovic]

The goal is to setup dotbot (or some other configuration tool).

Requirements:

• easy installation of dotfiles
• easy updates to the configuration
• easy synchronization across devices

[jankovidakovic]

https://anishathalye.com/managing-your-dotfiles/ This article explains the reasons why dotbot is cool.

Article summary:

• the best way to track dotfiles is to have them all in one directory and then symlink configs to the correct places on install

• symlink is better than copy because symlinks are synchronized automatically

• alternative to dotbot is a simple installation script that symlinks everything, but these scripts are often not robust enough

• dependencies and plugins should be managed by submodules

  • add submodule -> git submodule add link_to_submodule submodule_name
  • update submodules -> git submodule update --init --recursive
  • fetch latest version -> git submodule update --init --remote (note: whats the diff between this and last?)

• local customization:

  • have a separate repository with local configurations
  • local configurations should be on different branches
  • main dotfiles should be setup in a way to allow overriding with local configurations
    • if local_dotfile exists -> source it (_note: does this mean that we install local dotfiles before main dotfiles? because if the main dotfiles are installed first and local_dotfiles are installed later, do the localdotfiles ever get sourced?)
  • example: https://github.com/anishathalye/dotfiles-local

• consistent path to dotfiles can be achieved by symlinking ~/.dotfiles to dotfiles during installation

  • this ensures that we can install dotfiles anywhere on the system
  • this is especially useful for setting up on different machines with different permissions (note: why symlink from ~/.dotfiles to your directory, instead of the reverse?)

• dotfiles/bin can contain bash scripts, which can be sourced by just adding dotfiles/bin to PATH

[jankovidakovic]

Dotbot is successfully set up with baseline configurations for neovim, zsh, sway, and tmux.