polk

Dotfile manager.

Installation

With Cargo

bash cargo install polk

Examples

General usage

```bash

Grab and symlink dotfiles from my GitHub account.

(assumes repository named 'dotfiles')

polk setup github:dylanmckay

Grab and symlink dotfiles from another repository.

polk setup github:dylanmckay/otherdotfiles ```

Multiple users/dotfile repositories

```bash

Set up dotfiles for the default user (with what your computer username is).

Also symlink them to ~/

polk setup github:dylanmckay

Download dotfiles to a local cache folder but don't create symlinks

polk grab --user bob github:bob67

Open a shell to a custom home folder with dotfiles symlinked.

polk shell --user bob

Create symlinks to the currently grabbed dotfiles

Replace symlinks in ~/ with what bob has

polk link --user bob

Update the dotfiles (via git)

polk update

Remove all symlinks created by polk.

polk unlink ```

Utilities

```bash

Remove all symlinks and cached dotfiles/repositories (~/.polk)

polk forget

Print a bunch of information

polk info ```

Your dotfiles repository

A repository would generally look something like this

. .. .bashrc .rspec .tmux.conf .tmux.linux.conf .vim .config/awesome/config.lua README.md

How symlinking works works

Here is a table of how dotfiles within a repository map to symlinks in $HOME.

| File | Symlink | | ----------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | .bashrc | ~/.bashrc -> ~/<dotfiles repository path>/.bashrc | | .tmux.conf | ~/.tmux.conf -> ~/<dotfiles repository path>/.tmux.conf | | .config/awesome/config.lua | ~/.config/awesome/config.lua -> ~/<dotfiles repository path>/.config/awesome/config.lua |

Handling of config files in subdirectories

As you can see in the above table, if a dotfile resides in a subdirectory(s), those directories will get created in $HOME and then a symlink to the dotfile will be created within the subdirectories.

It is not possible with this tool to symlink an entire directory within a dotfiles repository to $HOME. If this were possible, applications would/could write new files into the repository, which isn't good.

Feature flags

Dotfiles can mention required features in their filenames. These dotfiles will be conditionally symlinked depending on the current system.

When a dotfile is linked, all feature flags are substituted with the feature name. For example, linux will become os, x86 will become arch, and unix will become family. Because of this, it is possible to source OS or arch specific dotfiles the same way across all architectures.

Examples

| File | Symlink | Note | | ----------------------------- | ---------------------- | --------------------------------------- | | .tmux.conf | ~/.tmux.conf | No feature flags, will always be linked | | .tmux.linux.conf | ~/.tmux.os.conf | Will only be linked on Linux | | .tmux.linux.x86.conf | ~/.tmux.os.arch.conf | Will only be linked on x86 Linux |