conf - a simple dotfile management tool
Motivation
I've used many tools to manage my dotfiles over the years. I've used a repo with an install script, GNU stow, and most recently, Ansible. Conf is an attempt to take the good parts of each approach and build a highly specific yet flexible tool for dotfile management.
Installation
go get git.sr.ht/~benburwell/conf
Usage
To start using conf, you'll need to specify a source directory. This is currently done through an environment variable. For example, to use a repository at ~/projects/dotfiles, use:
CONF_SOURCE=~/projects/dotfiles
Now, you can start adopting dotfiles for conf to manage. Let's start with
.vimrc:
$ conf adopt .vimrc
You can run this command from anywhere on your system, and conf will place a
copy of your ~/.vimrc file into $CONF_SOURCE/templates/.vimrc.
Open up $CONF_SOURCE/templates/.vimrc, make a change, and then run conf apply
.vimrc. You'll see that conf has updated your vimrc file with your latest
changes. Like conf adopt, this command can be run from anywhere on your
system; .vimrc in this case is relative to $CONF_SOURCE, not to your current
directory.
If you typically use Vim, you may wish to add the following to your .vimrc:
au BufWritePost ~/dotfiles/templates/* call ConfApply(expand('%:p'))
function! ConfApply(name)
let l:rel = substitute(a:name, "^".expand("~/dotfiles/templates/"), "", "")
silent execute "!conf apply " . l:rel
endfunction
Any time you write changes to a file in your dotfiles, conf will automatically apply them.
You may have noticed that your source dotfiles are in a directory named "templates". This is because you can use Go's templating engine to enhance your dotfiles. For example, you may want to include OS-dependent behavior:
{{ if eq OS "darwin" }}
export OPENER=open
{{ else }}
export OPENER=xdg-open
{{ end }}
The following variables are available for you:
OSArchHostnameHome
If you want to define your own variables, you may do so in
$CONF_SOURCE/vars.toml and they will be available under .Vars.