'Manage dotfiles inhibiting hardcoded paths? [closed]

Today I decided to manage and push my dotfiles in the repository. The motivation is to reuse the same dotfiles on multiple mac machines and ubuntu server machines.

I currently have thought of this structure:

├── bash
│   ├── aliases
│   ├── config
│   └── env
├── bash_profile
├── bashrc
├── hgrc
├── src
│   └── link.py
└── vimrc

link.py runs and creates symlinks for bashrc and bash_profile from ~ to where-ever this repository is cloned to.

Problem: 1

my bashrc contents: 

source bash/env
source bash/config
source bash/aliases

The problem is because the paths are relative, the files are not found. I don't want to use an absolute path because then I lose the flexibility to clone the repository anywhere I like.

similarly, my bash_profile contents:

source ./bashrc                       # same problem!
source ~/.bashrc

since I previously symlinked ~/.bashrc to dotfiles/bashrc I can reach it. But it still seems like a dirty hack to me.

Problem: 2

Where should I keep my paths which are custom to particular machine. Surely I don't want to put them in the repository and mess up every other system as well. Currently my custom paths are in ~/.profile. I am thinking to source it from bash/env with an if to check if it exists then use it otherwise not.

Would love to hear better approaches

macosbashunixdotfiles


Solution 1:[1]

Since I did not get much response here, I have resorted to expanding my src/link.py to symlink ~/.bash to dotfiles/bash so that I can reach bash/* using ~/.bash/*

I have also added a ignore list in my link.py to ignore .hg, bin directories so that they are not symlinked when doing a os.listdir().

I am still looking for a solution for my second problem, although I read somewhere that I can use separate branches for my dotfiles for each machine which have specific customization needs, and it seems to be the most closest clean solution right now.

Solution 2:[2]

I'm using symlinks, and not consider it as "dirty hack". Previously i was simple copying all files (and still doing this for the some files (not bash)), and because all files are for $HOME/.something i was used "$HOME" (not '~', because '~' was not expanded in double quotes but $HOME yes.)

Solution 3:[3]

It's really late reply, but still I will recommend you to check DFM (dotfiles manager). DFM addresses the problem you have in a very clean way:

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1
Solution 2 cumizgumy
Solution 3

Related Questions