Elegant Way To Store Dotfiles on GitHub

dot-filesgitgithubhomesymlink

I need an elegant solution to store my dotfiles on GitHub for easy access. I tried to create a dotfiles directory and symlink all the dotfiles into there. Then I tried adding the symlinks to git and committing in that directory, but git saves the links not the contents of the files it points to. Is there a way to do this or something similar?

Best Answer

I have no idea what the best approach is and elegance is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but I use the following for my dotfiles:

A ~/.dotfiles directory that contains all of the dotfiles themselves. These are all managed in a git repo.
A script, also in ~/.dotfiles that creates the required links into my home directory. I don't have any dotfiles in my home directory, only links into ~/.dotfiles. For example:
```
$ ls -l ~/.muttrc
lrwxr-xr-x  1 mj  mj  25 May  4  2014 /home/mj/.muttrc -> /home/mj/.dotfiles/muttrc
```

After I've cloned the repo onto a new machine (into ~/.dotfiles), I just run the script to update the symlinks.

I've found the above approach works very well for me.

Related Solutions

Github adding a repository as a fork from an existing clone

You can do it all from your existing repository (no need to clone the fork into a new (local) repository, create your branch, copy your commits/changes, etc.).

Get your commits ready to be published.

Refine any existing local commits (e.g. with git commit --amend and/or git rebase --interactive).

Commit any of your uncommitted changes that you want to publish (I am not sure if you meant to imply that you have some commits on your local master and some uncommitted changes, or just some uncommitted changes; incidentally, uncommitted changes are not “on a branch”, they are strictly in your working tree).

Rename your master branch to give it the name you want for your “new branch”. This is not strictly necessary (you can push from any branch to any other branch), but it will probably reduce confusion in the long run if your local branch and the branch in your GitHub fork have the same name.
```
git branch -m master my-feature
```
Fork the upstream GitHub repository
(e.g.) github.com:UpstreamOwner/repostory_name.git as
(e.g.) github.com:YourUser/repository_name.git.

This is done on the GitHub website (or a “client” that uses the GitHub APIs), there are no local Git commands involved.
In your local repository (the one that was originally cloned from the upstream GitHub repository and has your changes in its master), add your fork repository as a remote:
```
git remote add -f github github.com:YourUser/repository_name.git
```
Push your branch to your fork repository on GitHub.
```
git push github my-feature
```
Optionally, rename the remotes so that your fork is known as “origin” and the upstream as “upstream”.
```
git remote rename origin upstream
git remote rename github origin
```
One reason to rename the remotes would be because you want to be able to use git push without specifying a repository (it defaults to “origin”).

Symlinks and EncFS

Encfs stores what you tell it to store. If you tell it to store a symbolic link, it'll store a symbolic link.

If you want a file to be encrypted, you need to store it on the encrypted filesystem. Creating a symbolic link to the file won't move it.

(If you created two symbolic links to the file, on two different encrypted filesystems, would you expect it to be stored in both? That would be utterly bizarre.)

So move your dotfile directory to the encrypted filesystem, and create a symbolic link to where you want to have a view of these files:

mv ~/.rc ~/Public/
ln -s Public/.rc ~/

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Github adding a repository as a fork from an existing clone

Symlinks and EncFS

Related Question