[sdovan1]

I often need to login to colleagues' machines at work, but I find that their settings are not what I am familiar with. So I wrote an SSH wrapper in POSIX shell which tars dotfiles into a base64 string, passes it to SSH, and decodes / setups on the remote temp directory. Automatically remove when session ends.

Supported: .profile, .vimrc, .bashrc, .tmux.conf, etc.

This idea comes from kyrat[1]; passing files via a base64 string is a really cool approach.

[1]: https://github.com/fsquillace/kyrat/

[Joker_vD]

   scp my-precious-dotfiles remote:~
   trap 'ssh remote rm my-precious-dotfiles' EXIT
   ssh remote

Or you can even bake the trap into the remote bash's invocation, although that'd be a bit harder.

[stephenlf]

That overwrites the remote dotfiles. Any workarounds?

[godelski]

:h netrw

You can also just place config files anywhere if you know what you then load. That's what I do in my dotfiles, but not exactly like the parent. I also purposefully keep the repo size tiny so it's also just easy to clone. I'd recommend setting a env var so you can always just set that

Also don't forget you can have local vim files. I have a function at the end of my vimrc that looks for '.exrc', '.vim.local', '.nvim.local' in the current directory. Helpful for setting project settings.

[zeech]

I've found lnk [0] to be a nice tool for this. Similar to GNU Stow as another comment mentioned, but plays a bit nicer with git (and, in my opinion, is nicer to use).

Edit: just remembered there was a good comparison of lnk and stow on the HN discussion of lnk from a few months back [1].

[0] https://github.com/yarlson/lnk

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44080514

[sigwinch]

You can set HOME to some temporary path of your choosing. You’ll still need to be a little careful.

[rzzzt]

GNU Stow? https://systemcrafters.net/managing-your-dotfiles/using-gnu-...

Keep the alternate sets in different subdirectories.

[Joker_vD]

It's kinda amusing how much of interesting software there is beyond coreutils and GCC that came from GNU, and how little adoption it has actually seen.

[wakawaka28]

If they are in your home dir, does that matter?

[alsetmusic]

I came across something similar a few months ago. I pieced together a working hybrid by patching in parts from an older release with the latest version. I didn't ever work out if the latest version failed because of something in my environment or not, but I'm on a Mac fwiw.

https://github.com/cdown/sshrc

[fragmede]

> I often need to login to colleagues' machines at work, but I find that their settings are not what I am familiar with

I'd hate to jump to conclusions, but what username are you looking into what machines with for that to be an issue?

[amelius]

Ok, but what if your colleague does not have Vim installed?

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a tool that brings files over to the local computer, starts Vim on them, and then copies them back?

[Joker_vD]

That starts to sound like using VS Code in remote mode.

[exe34]

Emacs in tramp mode.

[QuinnyPig]

I can’t recall encountering a system in the last 15 years that didn’t have vim (or at least vi for esoteric things) on it.

[SoftTalker]

Would not be uncommon in a container or purpose-built VM.

[godelski]

Have you run into that? I can't recall ever facing that issue. Seems very weird to strip down that much and then use a different editor. Do you remember if ed was missing in those machines?

[bartvk]

> Do you remember if ed was missing in those machines

I had to laugh out loud. I couldn't imagine such a system, that wouldn't be POSIX compliant. So I looked it up, and indeed, it's entirely possible. Debian doesn't necessarily include it.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/609067

[SoftTalker]

Yes I've run into containers where every utility that wasn't needed to run the service was stripped out. Even tools such as "less."

[godelski]

So what was the editor?

[godelski]

While not mandatory, vi is part of the POSIX commands. I mean you could use ed or even hack your way with awk, sed, and/or grep but no one wants to deal with that bullshit. And if you're installing vi you might as well install vim, right?

I've been on a lot of systems and can't remember a single instance of not having vi (though I do vim). So pretty rare, like you said

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_POSIX_commands

[sdovan1]

We usually work on the VM with daily-built ISO. For example, I would compile and upload Java program to the frontend team member's VM, and type "srt" for "systemctl restart tomcat."

[xuhu]

How much time does it add when running e.g. "shittp user@lan-host uname" ?