Dotfiles (Git Bare Repository)

Inspired by and adapted from this post.

Starting from scratch

git init --bare $HOME/.dsprn_config
alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dsprn_config/ --work-tree=$HOME'
config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
echo "alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dsprn_config/ --work-tree=$HOME'" >> $HOME/.bashrc
echo ".dsprn_config" >> .gitignore

This configuration tracks customizations in a git repository by essentially doing the following:

• creates a folder named ~/.dsprn_config which is a git bare repository to track files
• uses the config alias in place of the regular git command when interacting with the repository
• uses the -local flag to hide the files which are not explicitly tracked
• adds the alias definition to .bashrc for convenience
• adds ~/.dsprn_config to .gitignore to avoid recursion issues

Installing dotfiles on a new system (or migrating to this setup)

If you already store customizations and dotfiles in a git repository, it's possible to migrate to this setup following these steps:

• make sure to ignore the folder where you'll clone the repository (avoiding recursion issues)

echo ".dsprn_config" >> .gitignore

• clone into a bare repository in a dot folder of your $HOME, like ~/.dsprn_config

git clone --bare <git-repo-url> $HOME/.dsprn_config

• define the config alias in the current terminal session

alias config='/usr/bin/git --git-dir=$HOME/.dsprn_config/ --work-tree=$HOME'

• write the content from the bare repository to your $HOME (this step could result in an error if some tracked files are already present as this command does not force an overwrite behaviour)

config checkout

• set showUntrackedFiles to no on this repository

config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

Script

You can use the script at the following Github Gist to automate the process described above

cd ~
curl -O https://gist.githubusercontent.com/dsprn/e7406058f01c2553b686c6a6c2905e75/raw/86f0ded9ac221ed95f52ba83bec7f3dc507226ed/config_install.sh
chmod u+x ./config_install.sh
./config_install.sh

In case of error the script will make a backup copy of all the files which already existed in the ~/.config_bk folder and then it will run the command a second time overwriting them.

If the repository has already been cloned before and you want to install the dotfiles again it's necessary for you to follow these steps

cd ~
rm -rf ./.dsprn_config/
./config_install.sh	# run a second time after having removed the old repo's folder