Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#61

Post by jeffbee » Mon, Aug 29, 2022, 2:32 PM UTC

arvinsim wrote: post #38

jeffbee wrote: post #35

This is fascinating to me. I have been a unix user since 1994 and I have carried my dotfiles around with me. I almost never edit them. Things like "oh-my-zsh" just look to me like supply chain attacks as a service. What is the benefit of these dotfile schemes?

> What is the benefit of these dotfile schemes? Not everyone has the time to create their own custom dotfiles. Some just want sane and beautiful terminal defaults.

I certainly hope I did not give the impression that I spent a great deal of time editing these files. My zshrc is three lines, the last of which was added in the 90s.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#62

Post by otterpro » Mon, Aug 29, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

I've used my custom bash script for managing dotfiles for ages and also have tried all other tools, but just couldn't get it right because I work on multiple OS. Then I found https://github.com/rhysd/dotfiles. It is the only tool I know of that can support multiple OS (Linux, mac, windows). I have to work with multiple OS and having a single dotfiles repo has been great, especially its ability to set different config on different OS, well as a unified Unix-like config setting.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#63

Post by ibnishak » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 8:20 AM UTC

Aarvay wrote: post #45

Just wanted to mention Stow[1] here, which I use to symlink my dotfiles on a new machine on a per app basis for many years now. My set up script just installs basic compiler toolchain and runs a bunch of stow commands based on Linux/Mac OS. I also adhere to XDG base spec[2] so I can keep my ~/ clean. 1: https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ 2: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory

How do you manage dotfiles of apps that overwrite symlinks? Eg: Xfce frequently does it.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#64

Post by jmprspret » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 2:04 PM UTC

hk1337 wrote: post #24

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

I love the atlassian method for dotfiles. I have been using for a few years now and currently stored on my private gitea server. I also create a branch for each variation, linux, macOS, macOS arm, windows. Basically they’re the same but they all have slightly different things I cannot use universally.

FWIW, that isn't the "atlassian method" for dotfiles. People have been doing bare repos for a while.

Also, pretty sure they even say at the start of the post they got the original alias from a HN commenter.

Re: Unofficial guide to dotfiles on GitHub

#65

Post by EduardoRT » Tue, Aug 30, 2022, 9:01 PM UTC

petepete wrote: post #47

Aarvay wrote: post #45

Just wanted to mention Stow[1] here, which I use to symlink my dotfiles on a new machine on a per app basis for many years now. My set up script just installs basic compiler toolchain and runs a bunch of stow commands based on Linux/Mac OS. I also adhere to XDG base spec[2] so I can keep my ~/ clean. 1: https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ 2: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/XDG_Base_Directory

Stow is the answer as far as I'm concerned. It's been around forever, it's standard, available in every package manager, the defaults just work. I use it in combination with a make to automate the setup of a new install.

Yeah, I don't understand why people like reinventing the wheel, Stow works, Make works, both are available everywhere, you don't need 30 layers of JS to manage dotfiles, I'm not against progress, but at least make something better than what's already around.