Hi all!

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how to handle my dotfiles again.

I’ve used chezmoi for a while, and while it’s good, I’ve been wanting something a little lighter.

The simplicity of having my $HOME be a git repository was attractive, but I ran into issues. Specifically, many command line tools I use such as fzf and ripgrep have a feature to automatically ignore in their search results any files which are ignored by a gitignore. This meant I had to either turn this feature off (not ideal) or they wouldn’t work any more. Also, the terminal prompt I use also showed I was within a git repository all the time, which was annoying.

Does anyone have an wisdom they’d like to share? If I can’t get the $HOME as a git repository working the way I’d like, I may check out GNU Stow, which seems to be the next most lightweight option.

Thanks!

  • ssenecaOP
    2·
    3 years ago

    I’ve been experimenting with the Git bare repository method and I think it solves all my problems! Thanks very much. If I run into issues again, I’ll for sure check out GNU Stow.

    • Adda
      2·
      3 years ago

      Glad to hear that. Hope everything will work out for you. I have already thought about trying Git bare repository myself, but so far I am quite content with just copying dotfiles from my repository directory to $HOME myself. Might give these options a second thought someday soon.