I use a combination of GNU stow and keybase’s encrypted git repos to store my dotfiles. It works pretty well and ensures I don’t have to maintain a gitignore.
Versioning Your Home Directory
11–20 of 45 posts
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#12I don't like the idea of putting your whole home directory under git.
First of all for most files manual versioning is overkill; you probably only need to share them and for that something like for Dropbox or Syncthing; this together with a file system that supports snapshots gives you most if not all that you need with much less work (no commits).
There are also some things that I don't want to share between computers for a reason or another (for example, some of my ssh keys). I know I can use .gitignore, but I prefer the opposite approach (state what I want to include, not exclude).
I do version my configuration scripts, but I keep them in a subfolder and symlink them to their proper place. This also allows me to selectively decide what should be shared on a given machine and what not.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#13[deleted]
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#14For dotfiles I use the workflow from this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754 with a keybase encrypted repo
I use:
git init --bare $HOME/.myconf
alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME'
config config status.showUntrackedFiles no
config status
config add .vimrc
config commit -m "Add vimrc"
config add .config/redshift.conf
config commit -m "Add redshift config"
config push
No extra tooling, no symlinks, files are tracked on a version control system, you can use different branches for different computers, you can replicate you configuration easily on new installation.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#15For dotfiles I use the workflow from this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11071754 with a keybase encrypted repo I use: git init --bare $HOME/.myconf alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.myconf/ --work-tree=$HOME' config config status.showUntrackedFiles no where my ~/.myconf directory is a git bare repository. Then any file within the home folder can be versioned with normal commands like: config…
Looks good, thanks.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#16I use Dropbox to sync my home directories across machines. I specifically want them to sync but not version. The reason is that I'll be working on one machine (say at the office), want to continue typing and testing on another machine (say at home), and specifically do NOT want to commit in the half-finished erratic state things may be in. Dropbox deals with syncing across machines on in instantaneous basis so that a…
Be careful with git repositories shared in Dropbox in this manner. If you are running an ide on multiple machines, the idle ones might do some crazy things to your .git tree. You can look for signs of trouble by running “find .git/ -name ‘conflict’”.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#17I use Dropbox to sync my home directories across machines. I specifically want them to sync but not version. The reason is that I'll be working on one machine (say at the office), want to continue typing and testing on another machine (say at home), and specifically do NOT want to commit in the half-finished erratic state things may be in. Dropbox deals with syncing across machines on in instantaneous basis so that a…
Be careful with git repositories shared in Dropbox in this manner. If you are running an ide on multiple machines, the idle ones might do some crazy things to your .git tree. You can look for signs of trouble by running “find .git/ -name ‘ conflict ’”.
Blerg. There should be asterisks around that italicized conflict word.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#18I use Dropbox to sync my home directories across machines. I specifically want them to sync but not version. The reason is that I'll be working on one machine (say at the office), want to continue typing and testing on another machine (say at home), and specifically do NOT want to commit in the half-finished erratic state things may be in. Dropbox deals with syncing across machines on in instantaneous basis so that a…
Be careful with git repositories shared in Dropbox in this manner. If you are running an ide on multiple machines, the idle ones might do some crazy things to your .git tree. You can look for signs of trouble by running “find .git/ -name ‘ conflict ’”.
Yep I've had this happen before. I'm usually careful to close IDEs but 99% of the time I just avoid IDEs. In the worst case I just copy in-progress source files and re-clone the repo. I don't really have a good alternative to a syncing folder across locations.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#19I have gone one step further for my computers at home (a desktop and a laptop) and have put most of the stuff in my home directory in a git repository, not just configuration files. That way I keep those two synchronized. The thing I do not have in the git repository is media files because they are too large. Instead I just backup the media files about twice a year.
For media files, git-annex [1] is really great. It makes it easy to create redundant backups by cloning the repo on additional devices and using annex to sync the content across all of them from a single worktree.
Re: Versioning Your Home Directory
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Be careful with git repositories shared in Dropbox in this manner. If you are running an ide on multiple machines, the idle ones might do some crazy things to your .git tree. You can look for signs of trouble by running “find .git/ -name ‘ conflict ’”.
Yep I've had this happen before. I'm usually careful to close IDEs but 99% of the time I just avoid IDEs. In the worst case I just copy in-progress source files and re-clone the repo. I don't really have a good alternative to a syncing folder across locations.
I’ve set up scripts that periodically grab my working state (unpushed commits, stage, and local diffs) for certain git working trees and push the changes to a directory in Dropbox.
The scripts also do a periodic “git fetch origin” in a broader set of local git repositories, so I usually have up-to-date code locally even if I haven’t been keeping things synced manually.