A dotfile manager for lazy people and pair programmers.
dfm doesn't require that the dotfiles in your repository start with dots though it handles either case equally well.
dfm supports these features that I was unable to find in other Dotfile Management solutions.
dfm's core feature is the idea of profiles. Profiles are simply a
collection of dotfiles that dfm manages and links in the $HOME
directory or configuration directories. This means that you can have
multiple profiles and overlap them.
This feature is hard to describe, so I will illustrate it's usefulness with two use cases:
I use one laptop for work and personal projects in my dfm profiles I have my
personal profile chasinglogic which contains all my dotfiles for Emacs, git,
etc. and a "work" profile which only has a .gitconfig that has my work email
in it. So my profile directory looks like this:
text
profiles/
├── chasinglogic
│ ├── agignore
│ ├── bash
│ ├── bashrc
│ ├── gitconfig
│ ├── gnupg
│ ├── password-store
│ ├── pypirc
│ ├── spacemacs.d
│ └── tmux.conf
└── work
└── gitconfig
Since dfm when linking only overwrites the files which are in the new
profile, I can run dfm link work and still have access to my emacs
configuration but my gitconfig has been updated to use my work
email. Similarly when I leave work I just dfm link chasinglogic to
switch back.
See profile modules for an even better solution to this particular use case.
The original inspiration for this tool was pair programming with my
friend lionize. lionize has a dotfiles
repository so I can clone it using the git backend for dfm with dfm
clone --name lionize https://github.com/lionize/dotfiles.
Now our profile directory looks like:
text
profiles/
├── chasinglogic
│ ├── .dfm.yml
│ ├── .git
│ ├── .gitignore
│ ├── agignore
│ ├── bash
│ ├── bashrc
│ ├── gitconfig
│ ├── gnupg
│ ├── password-store
│ ├── pypirc
│ ├── spacemacs.d
│ └── tmux.conf
├── lionize
│ ├── .agignore
│ ├── .git
│ ├── .gitconfig
│ ├── .gitignore_global
│ ├── .gitmessage
│ ├── .scripts
│ ├── .tmux.conf
│ ├── .vim
│ ├── .vimrc -> ./.vim/init.vim
│ └── .zshrc
└── work
├── .git
└── gitconfig
Now when I'm driving I simply dfm link chasinglogic and when passing back to
lionize he runs dfm link lionize and we don't have to mess with multiple
machines vice versa.
dfm supports profile modules which can be either additional dotfiles profiles as
accepted by the dfm clone command or can be any git repository such as
Spacemacs. You can get more info about
how to use them and configure them in Configuration
dfm supports pre and post command hooks. that allows you to specify before and
after command shell scripts to run. For example, I use a profile module to keep
certain ssh keys in an encrypted git repository. Whenever I run the dfm sync command
I have hooks which fix the permissions of the keys and ssh-add them to my ssh
agent. You can read about how to write your own hooks in
Configuration
$XDG_CONFIG_HOMEdfm respects dotfiles which exist in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory,
meaning if in your repository you have a folder named config or
.config it'll translate those into the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
directory automatically. Similarly when using dfm add if inside your
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME or $HOME/.configuration directories it'll add those to
the repository appropriately.
dfm by default will skip multiple relevant files.
dfm will skip the .git directory so your $HOME directory isn't
turned into a git repository.
If you would like to store a global .gitignore file you can either omit the
leading dot (so just gitignore) or name the global one .ggitignore and dfm
will translate the name for you. Otherwise it assumes that .gitignore is the
gitignore for the profile's repository and so skips it.
Want to make a README for your dotfiles? Go ahead! As long as the file name
starts with README dfm will ignore it. So README.txt README.md and
README.rst or whatever other permutations you can dream up all work.
You should put a LICENSE on all code you put on the internet and some dotfiles /
configurations are actual code (See: Emacs). If you put a LICENSE in your
profile dfm will respect you being a good open source citizen and not clutter your
$HOME directory.
This is a special dfm file used for hooks today and in the future for other ways
to extend dfm. As such dfm doesn't put it in your $HOME directory.
The above ignores are implemented as a dfm feature called Mappings. You can write your own mappings to either skip, skip based on platform or translate files to different locations than dfm would normally place them. You can read how to configure your own mappings in Configuration
dfm is available on PyPi and should be installed from there:
text
$ pip3 install dfm
dfm supports Python 3+.
Clone the repository and run make install:
bash
git clone https://github.com/chasinglogic/dfm
cd dfm
make install
It's possible that for your system you will need to run the make command with sudo.
```text
Usage:
dfm [options]
Dotfile management written for pair programmers. Examples on getting started with dfm are avialable at https://github.com/chasinglogic/dfm
Options: -v, --verbose If provided print more logging info --debug If provided print debug level logging info -h, --help Print this help information
Commands: help Print usage information about dfm commands sync (s) Sync your dotfiles add (a) Add the file to the current dotfile profile clean (x) Clean dead symlinks clone (c) Use git clone to download an existing profile git (g) Run the given git command on the current profile init (i) Create a new profile link (l) Create links for a profile list (ls) List available profiles remove (rm) Remove a profile run-hook (rh) Run dfm hooks without using normal commands where (w) Prints the location of the current dotfile profile
See 'dfm help
If you already have a dotfiles repository you can start by cloning it using the clone command.
SSH URLs will work as well.
bash
dfm clone https://github.com/chasinglogic/dotfiles
If you're using GitHub you can shortcut the domain:
bash
dfm clone chasinglogic/dotfiles
If you want to clone and link the dotfiles in one command:
bash
dfm clone --link chasinglogic/dotfiles
You may have to use --overwrite as well if you have existing non-symlinked
versions of your dotfiles
Once you have multiple profiles you can switch between them using dfm link
bash
dfm link some-other-profile
See the Usage Notes below for some quick info on what to expect from other dfm commands.
If you don't have a dotfiles repository the best place to start is with dfm init
bash
dfm init my-new-profile
Then run dfm link to set it as the active profile, this is also how you switch
profiles
bash
dfm link my-new-profile
Once that's done you can start adding your dotfiles
bash
dfm add ~/.bashrc
Alternatively you can add multiple files at once
bash
dfm add ~/.bashrc ~/.vimrc ~/.vim ~/.emacs.d
Then create your dotfiles repository on GitHub. Instructions for how to do that can be found here. Once that's done get the "clone" URL for your new repository and set it as origin for the profile:
Note: When creating the remote repository don't choose any options such as "initialize this repository with a README" otherwise git'll get cranky when you add the remote because of a recent git update and how it handles unrelated histories if you do don't worry the linked post explains how to get past it.
bash
dfm git remote add origin <your clone URL>
Then simply run dfm sync to sync your dotfiles to the remote
bash
dfm sync
Now you're done!
dfm supports a .dfm.yml file in the root of your repository that
changes dfm's behavior when syncing and linking your profile. This
file will be ignored when doing a dfm link so won't end up in
your home directory. The .dfm.yml can be used to configure these
features:
Modules in dfm are like sub profiles. They're git repositories that are cloned into a
a special directory: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules. They're shared across
profiles so if two dotfile profiles have the same module they'll share that
module.
The syntax for defining a minimum module is as follows:
yaml
modules:
- repository: git@github.com:chasinglogic/dotfiles
This would clone my dotfiles repository as a module into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules/dotfiles. If I wanted to use a unique name or
some other folder name so it wouldn't be shared you can specify an additional
option name:
yaml
modules:
- repository: git@github.com:chasinglogic/dotfiles
name: chasinglogic-dotfiles
Which would instead clone into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules/chasinglogic-dotfiles. You can define multiple
modules:
yaml
modules:
- repository: git@github.com:chasinglogic/dotfiles
name: chasinglogic-dotfiles
- repository: git@github.com:lionize/dotfiles
Make sure that you specify a name if the resulting clone location as defined by git would conflict as we see here. Both of these would have been cloned into dotfiles which would cause the clone to fail for the second module if we didn't specify name for chasinglogic's dotfiles.
An additional use for modules is that of a git repository you want to clone but not link. An example use would be for downloading Spacemacs or any such community configuration like oh-my-zsh, etc.
yaml
modules:
- repo: git@github.com:syl20bnr/spacemacs
link: none
pull_only: true
location: ~/.emacs.d
Here we specify a few extra keys. There purpose should be self explanatory but if you're curious below is a detailed explanation of all keys that each module configuration supports.
Required, this is the git repository to clone for the module.
This changes the cloned name. This only has an effect if location isn't
provided. Normally a git repository would be cloned into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dfm/modules and the resulting folder would be named whatever
git decides it should be based on the git URL. If this is provided it'll be
cloned into the modules directory with the specified name. This is useful if
multiple profiles use the same module.
If provided module will be cloned into the specified location. You can use the
~ bash expansion here to represent $HOME. No other expansions are available.
This option is useful for cloning community configurations like oh-my-zsh or
spacemacs.
Determines when to link the module. Link in this context means that it'll be
treated like a normal dotfile profile, so all files will go through the same
translation rules as a regular profile and be linked accordingly. Available
values are post, pre, and none. post is the default and means that the
module will be linked after the parent profile. "pre" means this will be linked
before the parent profile, use this if for instance you want to use most files
from this profile and override a few files with those from the parent file since
dfm will overwrite the links with the last one found. "none" means the module is
not a dotfiles profile and shouldn't be linked at all, an example being
community configuration repositories like oh-my-zsh or spacemacs.
If set to true won't attempt to push any changes. It's important to
know that dfm always tries to push to origin master, so if you don't
have write access to the repository or don't want it to automatically
push to master then you should set this to true. This is useful for
community configuration repositories.
A list of file mappings as described below in Mappings. Modules do not inherit parent mappings, they do however inherit the default mappings as described in Skips Relevant Files
Mappings are a way of defining custom file locations. To understand mappings one must understand dfm's default link behavior:
For an example let's say you have a file named my_config.txt in your
dotfile repository. dfm will try and translate that to a new location
of $HOME/.my_config.txt. It'll then create a symlink at that location
pointing to my_config.txt in your dotfile repository.
With mappings you can replace this behavior and make it so dfm will
link my_config wherever you wish. This is useful if you need to
store config files that are actually global. Such as configuration
files that would go into /etc/ or if you want to sync some files in
your repo but not link them.
Here is a simple example:
yaml
mappings:
- match: my_global_etc_files
target_dir: /etc/
- match: something_want_to_skip_but_sync
skip: true
- match: something_only_for_macos
target_os: "Darwin"
- match: some_file_for_mac_and_linux_only
target_os:
- "Linux"
- "Darwin"
Here dfm uses the match as a regular expression to match the file
paths in your dotfile repository. When it finds a path which matches
the regular expression it adds an alternative linking behavior. For
anything where skip is true it simply skips linking. For anything
with target_dir that value will override $HOME when linking. For
anything with a target_os value the file will only be linked if dfm
is being run on the given os.
Mappings support the following configuration options:
Match is a regular expression used to match the file path of any files in your dotfile repository. This is used to determine if the custom linking behavior for a file should be used.
These are python style regular expressions and are matched using the
re.findall
method so are by default fuzzy matching.
If provided the file/s will not be linked.
Where to link the file to. The ~ expansion for $HOME is supported
here but no other expansions are available. It is worth noting that if
you're using ~ in your target_dir then you should probably just
create the directory structure in your git repo.
A string or list of strings matching the OS's to link this file
on. A non-exhaustive list of common values are: Linux, Darwin, or
Windows. This matches the string returned by Python's
platform.system()
function.
Hooks in dfm are used for those few extra tasks that you need to do whenever your dotfiles are synced or linked.
An example from my personal dotfiles is running an Ansible playbook
whenever I sync my dotfiles. To accomplish this I wrote an
after_sync hook as follows:
yaml
hooks:
after_sync:
- ansible-playbook ansible/dev-mac.yml
Now whenever I sync my dotfiles Ansible will run my dev-mac playbook to make
sure that my packages etc are also in sync!
The hooks option is just a YAML map which supports the following keys:
after_link, before_link, after_sync, and before_sync. The
values of any of those keys is a YAML list of strings which will be
executed in a shell via /bin/sh -c '$YOUR COMMAND'. An example would
be:
yaml
hooks:
after_link:
- ls -l
- whoami
- echo "All done!"
All commands are ran with a working directory of your dotfile
repository and the current process environment is passed down to the
process so you can use $HOME etc environment variables in your
commands.
git checkout -b my-new-featuregit commit -am 'Add some feature'git push origin my-new-featureAll pull requests should go to the develop branch not master. Thanks!
This code is distributed under the GNU General Public License
``` Copyright (C) 2018 Mathew Robinson
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
```