symlinkto

Create symlinks to version-controlled files.

Install

$ make

This will install the script symlinkto in $HOME/.local/bin.

Usage

Let us first describe what we want to achieve.

Consider a $HOME (~) directory tree as follows:

~/
└── github.com/
    └── okomestudio/
        └── symlinkto/

In these directories, we want to have three files, .bashrc, .gitconfig, and .dir-locals.el:

~/
├── .bashrc
└── github.com/
    ├── .gitconfig
    └── okomestudio/
        └── symlinkto/
            └── .dir-locals.el

Instead of creating files there, we want to put them under version control, e.g., with a "dotfiles" Git repo, and have symlinks pointing to them. Say we have such a version-controlled repository at ~/github.com/okomestudio/dotfiles:

~/
└── github.com/
    └── okomestudio/
        └── dotfiles/
            ├── .bashrc
            └── github.com/
                ├── .gitconfig
                └── okomestudio/
                    └── symlinkto/
                        └── .dir-locals.el

In this case, we set SYMLINKTO_TREE to ~/github.com/okomestudio/dotfiles

export SYMLINKTO_TREE=~/github.com/okomestudio/dotfiles

in one of the shell startup files (e.g., .bashrc) (or in .envrc of direnv).

Then, after running symlinkto, the following symlinks are created:

~/
├── .bashrc -> $SYMLINKTO_TREE/.bashrc
└── github.com/
    ├── .gitconfig -> $SYMLINKTO_TREE/github.com/.gitconfig
    └── okomestudio/
        └── symlinkto/
            └── .dir-locals.el -> $SYMLINKTO_TREE/github.com/symlinkto/.dir-locals.el

There you have it. This is what symlinkto is for.

Running symlinkto

The symlinkto shell command behaves differently based on the current directory.

$ symlinkto
... for each symlink candidate, it prompts for a user action ...

When the current directory is in or under SYMLINKTO_TREE, all the symlink candidates are recursively searched for in the subdirectories, and for each, symlinkto prompts the user for an action (i.e., create, delete, or skip).

When the current directory is outside SYMLINKTO_TREE, symlinkto recursively searches for relevant symlink candidates in or under the current directory, and for each candidate found, it prompts the user for an action (i.e., create, delete, or skip).