I'm a fan of just having my $HOME as a plain git repo with "*" in ~/.gitignore. Having to force add new files is a minor chore but one I'm more than happy to live with.
This is what I do also.
Dotfiles Management
31–40 of 143 posts
Re: Dotfiles Management
#32Nice hack, but I still believe that home-manager [0] should be the way to go. It's the gateway drug to the Nix ecosystem and cleanly solves the composability problem which this "one-size-fits-all repo checked out to root" approach will have some trouble with. [0] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager
For me the killer feature of home-manager versus other dotfiles managers is that it also installs any software your dotfiles depend on or assume to be present on the machine.
Re: Dotfiles Management
#33How do people here handle secrets like e.g. passwords / env variables / ssh keys in their dotfiles? I've written simple encrypt/decrypt with PGP, but since I've kinda lost trust into Keybase I have no simple way to bootstrap PGP.
Pass: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pass
Emacs uses .authinfo transparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7jhcq8/authinfogpg/
Re: Dotfiles Management
#34I'm a BSD user, so I tend to gravitate towards using rcs. Took a little while to get the muscle memory down, but it does work well for keeping track of my dotfiles.
Re: Dotfiles Management
#35How do people here handle secrets like e.g. passwords / env variables / ssh keys in their dotfiles? I've written simple encrypt/decrypt with PGP, but since I've kinda lost trust into Keybase I have no simple way to bootstrap PGP.
https://www.chezmoi.io/ supports:
* Keeping secrets in your password manager (all major password managers are supported), see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/password-managers/.
* Encrypting entire files with gpg or age, see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/encryption/.
You can also bootstrap your gpg/age private key on a new machine with a passphrase, see https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/frequently-asked-questions....
Re: Dotfiles Management
#36nix home-manager is really great at this (and declarative!)
Re: Dotfiles Management
#37I always start out with the best of intentions for dotfile mangement etc, using tools like stow, git and so on.
Eventually I get lazy and don't bother checking stuff in and forget where half of the stuff is.
Might try this solution but I'm too cynical to think it'll be something I'll stick with
Re: Dotfiles Management
#38I'm a fan of just having my $HOME as a plain git repo with "*" in ~/.gitignore. Having to force add new files is a minor chore but one I'm more than happy to live with.
Bare git repos have lots of limitations, namely:
* Maintaining per-machine configurations is a hassle, usually involving a lot of manual branch juggling.
* There's no support for storing secrets in a password manager or in encrypted files.
Read more reasons why dotfile managers are better than bare git repos at https://www.chezmoi.io/why-use-chezmoi/#i-already-have-a-sys...
Re: Dotfiles Management
#39At our startup (FluxNinja), we provide MacBooks and Linux Desktops (System76) to our engineering staff. We have invested in common dotfiles[0] to help them keep dev experience consistent across machines. We use chezmoi for dotfiles management.
Really recommend investing in common dotfiles at the organization level. For young developers, a standard setup provides a big productivity boost.
Re: Dotfiles Management
#40Nice hack, but I still believe that home-manager [0] should be the way to go. It's the gateway drug to the Nix ecosystem and cleanly solves the composability problem which this "one-size-fits-all repo checked out to root" approach will have some trouble with. [0] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager
the read has “words of warning” almost immediately at the top about being familiar with nix first. it’s the gateway drug to nix?
bad docs and difficult to grok error messages seem to be a consistent theme that comes up learning nix.