Dotbot: A Cute Lil' Dotfiles Manager

I made a simple little dotfiles manager because I got tired of creating symlinks all the time.

You can install dotbot via the gem command:

$ gem install dotbot

Once you have it installed, either create a ~/.dotbot file (YAML) with the following contents.

dir: ~/.dotfiles  # or whatever your preferred location is

Optionally, instead of a .dotbot file, you can use environment variables, each of the pattern DOTBOT_. For instance, you could execute some commands by saying

$ DOTBOT_DIR=~/shnargleflorp dotbot update

More commands and options to come later.

$ dotbot track <filename> [--git]

This command adds the file to your dotfiles repo and creates a symlink in the file's old location so it will stay updated. Use the --git flag to also add/commit/push to your remote dotfiles repo.

$ dotbot update

This command is pretty much just a git pull in your dotfiles repo.

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/[USERNAME]/dotbot-mini. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Everyone interacting in the Dotbot::Mini project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.