knoebber / dotfile

Simple version control made for tracking single files

Dotfile

Dotfile is a version control system designed for dotfiles. It aliases file paths to short names and provides an interface to manage file state. Use a remote server like dotfilehub.com to push, pull, or find new files.

Why Dotfile?

Most existing solutions are built on some combination of git/stow/symlinks. This introduces the complexities and potential pitfalls of these tools. Git is designed for a directory of related files, whereas dotfiles are often scattered unrelated files.

Dotfile is a self contained system designed from the ground up to make managing single files as simple as possible. Files are stored in their normal locations on disk without any symbolic links. Dotfile doesn’t care if tracked files are moved or edited with external tools.

Advantages over git based systems:

• Not limited to one parent directory - initialize any file, even outside $HOME
• No merge conflicts
• Pull or push a single file instead of the entire repo
• Revert a single file to a past revision without affecting other files
• Easily rewrite or delete file history
• Simple web interface for managing files remotely

Things Dotfile doesn’t do:

• File encryption
• Manage non text files
• Manage large files
• Templates
• Branches

Getting Started

1. Install the CLI
2. Create a Dotfilehub account to share files between machines
3. Setup the CLI to use remote functions

Optionally self host a Dotfilehub instance.

Documentation

• CLI Documentation
• Web Documentation
• Acknowledgments

Examples

Dotfile commands are like git but simplified.

Check a file in:

dotfile init ~/.bashrc

This creates an initial commit. Dotfile will store the path of the file and give it a default alias of bashrc. Use the alias to refer to it at anytime.

Open ~/.bashrc in $EDITOR:

dotfile edit bashrc

Check the diff after making changes:

dotfile diff bashrc

Commit new changes:

dotfile commit bashrc "Add dotfile alias"

View commit history:

dotfile log bashrc

Revert its uncommitted changes:

dotfile checkout -f bashrc

Push to a remote server:

dotfile push bashrc

Install all of your dotfiles:

dotfile pull --all

Contribute

Want to contribute? Open a pull request or an issue at github.com/knoebber/dotfile

Feedback is always appreciated - contact me at [email protected]

dotfile's Issues

Improve shell completion

It doesn't really work - might consider using different CLI framework.

Refactor adding flags to commands

Currently it adds two flags via a closure. This isn't maintainable if we need to add more flags in the future.

Add tests for the file package

Add way to see all currently tracked file names and their paths

I'm thinking something like dot -l . Or dot status , or maybe its just the default output of dot.
Possible output:

bash => ~/.bashrc
emacs => .emacs.d/init.el
i3 => ~/.config/i3/config

Add tab completions

Commands, aliases and commits hashes should tab complete

Use a mock filesystem for tests

Make CLI install easier

go install might not put the binary in the user's $PATH.

Also, should add AUR/Brew packages.

Allow CLI alias argument to be a path

Make the following work:

$ dot init ~/test.txt
Initialized as "test"

$ dotfile diff ~/test.txt

Implement diff

This should support diffing between different commit hashes, and diffing between uncommitted work and the current commit.

Throw error if checkout is going overwrite uncommited changes

It's convenient to revert a file back to its last commit and discard any new changes. Currently you can do this with dot checkout <filename>. This will discard any changes without telling user.

Instead it should throw an error like: "<filename>" has uncommitted changes, use -f to override.

Also implement -f option for checkout.

Travis CI build fails

Add version command to CLI

Implement checkout

This should revert the file to its state at the commit and change its "current" key in the json to the hash.

Improve diff

Diff currently it shows the full file. It should be smarter and only show areas that change while still providing enough context to know where the changes are.

Panics if you attempt to commit a file that isn't tracked

To reproduce

$ dot init ~/.bashrc
Initialized /home/nicolas/.bashrc as "bashrc"

$ dot commit bashrc
Created /home/nicolas/.dotfile/bashrc/786bc4cd0fdcb72c461b8f5465304e6bbc7c91c8

$ dot commit bashr
panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference

`dot init` should create an initial commit