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Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

dotfiles.github.io

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Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#11

Post by seri4l »

Cyberdog wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Create a .gitignore in your ~ with an asterisk on the first line and `!.dotfilename` on subsequent lines; the asterisk means Git will ignore everything, and the ! means Git will un-ignore that specific file or directory. (Be sure to include the .gitignore file itself.) Use Git as normal and push. To deploy on another machine/account, the easiest method is to check out as normal into a temporary directory, then…

One potential drawback of doing that is that every directory under ~/ that is not itself part of another git repository becomes part of that git repository, which could make some programs act weird, particularly project auto-detectors in IDEs and such.

To avoid that, one can rename the `.git` folder, effectively disabling auto-discovery, and run git with the option `--git-dir=`.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#12

Post by Cyberdog »

seri4l wrote: post #11
Cyberdog wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Create a .gitignore in your ~ with an asterisk on the first line and `!.dotfilename` on subsequent lines; the asterisk means Git will ignore everything, and the ! means Git will un-ignore that specific file or directory. (Be sure to include the .gitignore file itself.) Use Git as normal and push. To deploy on another machine/account, the easiest method is to check out as normal into a temporary directory, then…

One potential drawback of doing that is that every directory under ~/ that is not itself part of another git repository becomes part of that git repository, which could make some programs act weird, particularly project auto-detectors in IDEs and such. To avoid that, one can rename the `.git` folder, effectively disabling auto-discovery, and run git with the option `--git-dir= `.

So the IDE or whatever would basically traverse up the filesystem looking for the first directory with a .git subdirectory? I've never encountered something like that but I suppose it's possible. Do you know of any IDEs specifically that do that?

At any rate, I didn't know renaming the .git directory was possible. Do you have to add the --git-dir option to every subsequent git command? Sounds like a pain but my dotfiles change rarely enough that I guess I could live with it if I had to.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#13

Post by gryn »

Cyberdog wrote: post #12
seri4l wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One potential drawback of doing that is that every directory under ~/ that is not itself part of another git repository becomes part of that git repository, which could make some programs act weird, particularly project auto-detectors in IDEs and such. To avoid that, one can rename the `.git` folder, effectively disabling auto-discovery, and run git with the option `--git-dir= `.

So the IDE or whatever would basically traverse up the filesystem looking for the first directory with a .git subdirectory? I've never encountered something like that but I suppose it's possible. Do you know of any IDEs specifically that do that? At any rate, I didn't know renaming the .git directory was possible. Do you have to add the --git-dir option to every subsequent git command? Sounds like a pain but my dotfi…

you can also create a .git file with the path for the git-dir folder (git-dir: /path-to-git-folder/) but that is kind of like having the .git folder with the exception that some programs don't seem to support it.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#14

Post by statico »

plaguepilled wrote: post #8
prokopton wrote: post #7

Their Vim-specific recommendations are woefully out of date.

Can you provide a link to more current recommendations for Vim? I've used this article so I'd like to know what it got wrong.

I’ve written a bit. Maybe it’s helpful.

https://statico.link/vim3 https://statico.link/dotfiles

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#15

Post by rgoulter »

plaguepilled wrote: post #8
prokopton wrote: post #7

Their Vim-specific recommendations are woefully out of date.

Can you provide a link to more current recommendations for Vim? I've used this article so I'd like to know what it got wrong.

I used vim years ago, and the list looks like it was written then.

e.g. the package management. vim-plug seems fine, it seems odd to me to mention the others. (Pathogen's readme now mentions that it recommends vim's built-in package management. Vundle and neoplug haven't had a commit in years).

In terms of vim distributions, https://github.com/SpaceVim/SpaceVim probably deserves a mention, as inspired by the popular Spacemacs.

It'd probably be worth mentioning NeoVim.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#16

Post by sokoloff »

MereInterest wrote: post #5
jbaber wrote: post #2

[This] way (linked from the tutorials section of the page) is a great way to version your dotfiles without symlinks or installer scripts. [This]: https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/dotfiles

What issue do symlinks have that makes them worth listing as a negative? Asking as someone who wrote an installer script to make symlinks a decade ago, and has used it whenever setting up a new computer ever since.

I use them and have no issues, but some editors don’t respect symlinks when making backups when you’ve opened the symlink (Rename existing file, make new file with the old name, and now the symlink is renamed and subsequent updates are unlinked as well). I seem to recall I had to set an emacs var to avoid this behavior.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#17

Post by fsareshwala »

Cyberdog wrote: post #4

tl;dr: Create a .gitignore in your ~ with an asterisk on the first line and `!.dotfilename` on subsequent lines; the asterisk means Git will ignore everything, and the ! means Git will un-ignore that specific file or directory. (Be sure to include the .gitignore file itself.) Use Git as normal and push. To deploy on another machine/account, the easiest method is to check out as normal into a temporary directory, then…

This is what I do. It's simple enough and doesn't require any external dependencies. Highly recommend this approach.

The only issue I've had with this approach is that new files which I'd like to commit to the repository are ignored by default. One could use the .gitignore negation strategy like OP mentions to first unignore the file and then add it to the repository. I just end up using git add -f foo to force the addition even though foo is ignored.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#19

Post by seri4l »

Cyberdog wrote: post #12
seri4l wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One potential drawback of doing that is that every directory under ~/ that is not itself part of another git repository becomes part of that git repository, which could make some programs act weird, particularly project auto-detectors in IDEs and such. To avoid that, one can rename the `.git` folder, effectively disabling auto-discovery, and run git with the option `--git-dir= `.

So the IDE or whatever would basically traverse up the filesystem looking for the first directory with a .git subdirectory? I've never encountered something like that but I suppose it's possible. Do you know of any IDEs specifically that do that? At any rate, I didn't know renaming the .git directory was possible. Do you have to add the --git-dir option to every subsequent git command? Sounds like a pain but my dotfi…

Yeah, the git command traverses up the filesystem until it finds a ./.git/HEAD file or until it reaches /, whatever happens first. The problem comes when a 3rd program uses git to find the root of a project that doesn't exist and instead of failing finds ~/.git and naively decides to index everything under ~/. I don't know of any specific IDEs that do that, although I vaguely remember running into a similar issue in the past, maybe not with an IDE, which is probably why I do it that way.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#20

Post by [deleted] »

rgoulter wrote: post #15
plaguepilled wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a link to more current recommendations for Vim? I've used this article so I'd like to know what it got wrong.

I used vim years ago, and the list looks like it was written then. e.g. the package management. vim-plug seems fine, it seems odd to me to mention the others. (Pathogen's readme now mentions that it recommends vim's built-in package management. Vundle and neoplug haven't had a commit in years). In terms of vim distributions, https://github.com/SpaceVim/SpaceVim probably deserves a mention, as inspired by the popular…

[deleted]
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