Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lonetwin 3721 days ago
Any specific reason why $HOME is not good for a git repo in this specific case ? AFAICT, the repo is tracking only what is mentioned in the .gitignore.

As for symlinks, heh, yes I do know they are not silly and actually extremely useful and yes I know how to use them. I simply think they are silly for managing dotfiles. If your intent is to version your dotfiles and have different 'profiles' across your systems, using the tools at hand -- well, in theory you can write a bunch of script to create the symlinks and 'manage' them as well -- but I just find /that/ silly.
1 comments
funkaster 3721 days ago
just the fact that it feels _unnatural_. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that personally I don't feel it's a good thing. I know it's tracking only the things you add to it, but still. I think my problem with it is that it feels messy.

My approach: git repo with a very simple setup script that creates symlinks to the dotfiles/dotdirs. It also manages some sensitive things like gpg/ssh keys.

link
tacone 3721 days ago
Yeah, in some way it's something the VCS are lacking right now: being able to add files outside the .git/ parent directory, so you can index a given directory in multiple working trees/repositories.

So you can have a ~/dotfiles working tree that points to ~. And perhaps a ~/mydata working tree that points to ~ as well. Both will index different files as manually added by the user.

link