My dotfiles setup using git bare repository functionality.

• Table of contents
  • Prerequisites
  • Set up from scratch
  • Install the dotfiles on a new machine
  • Credits
  • License

Prerequisites

• git
• rsync (to set up a new machine)

Set up from scratch

1. Create a placeholder for git internal files

mkdir -p ~/dotfiles

2. Initialize the bare repository

git init --bare ~/dotfiles

3. Create an alias to interact with the dotfiles

alias dot='git --git-dir=~/dotfiles/ --work-tree=$HOME'

So now instead of git add or git status, use dot add, dot status etc.

4. Configure git to ignore all files by default

dot config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

5. Now you are ready to track your dot files.

Note: To see which files are currently being tracked, use

dot ls-tree -r master --name-only

Install the dotfiles on a new machine

1. Clone to a temporary folder

git clone --separate-git-dir=~/dotfiles <remote-git-url> tmp-dotfiles

2. Synchronize the files

rsync --recursive --verbose --exclude '.git' tmp-dotfiles/ ~/

3. Remove the temporary folder

rm -rf tmp-dotfiles

Credits

• dotfiles image by Joel Glovier

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt for more information.