Post AzfDSts9CgPfDGkku8 by publicvoit@graz.social
(DIR) More posts by publicvoit@graz.social
(DIR) Post #AzfDSts9CgPfDGkku8 by publicvoit@graz.social
2025-10-28T09:34:54Z
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Has anybody experience with dot-file-management tools such as #chezmoi, #dotbot, #rcm, #vcsh, #yadm, bare git?Naïve symlinks don't work for me any more.Maybe I'll test chezmoi first as it looks promising without having compared it to others besides reading https://www.chezmoi.io/comparison-table/Write me your experience and if you have tested multiple solutions, I'm very curious about your recommendation!My requirements: I maintain 3 Debian stable computers (12 + 13). One of them has multiple users (business/private). I share lots of similar config files for shell tools as well as desktop environment (xfce, GNOME, KDE; I probably switch all to KDE). I most probably need a template mechanism to enable host-specific settings. Some config files may not be identical on different hosts, most are (besides host-specific settings). When tools write back to their config files, this should be handled well by the dotfile management tool. Sync via arbitrary sync tool (syncthing or git preferred).
(DIR) Post #AzfEPNVr9v5VwAD9Zg by soliman@pouet.chapril.org
2025-10-28T09:45:26Z
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@publicvoit I used to use #stow and moved to #chezmoi recently. It's very nice for the templates, and the handling of more things (scripts, externals, etc.)BUT by default it doesn't use symlinks, only copies of files, and hence when a tool writes to the config file, it is not propagated back.You can of course tell chezmoi to use a symlink for such a file (https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/manage-different-types-of-file/#handle-configuration-files-which-are-externally-modified) but it's not very convenient.Also chezmoi's handling of permissions is basic (enough for me, but…).
(DIR) Post #AzfM1WAO8GQ5SYIqiu by publicvoit@graz.social
2025-10-28T11:10:46Z
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@soliman Thanks for that.I think this is perfectly fine with me. I guess that most chezmoi-activity will be done when an account is newly set up. When I do have changes in my "shared config" afterwards, a manual update-command on each account is actually quite nice to have I think.Therefore, it look as if chezmoi does tick my boxes in general.
(DIR) Post #AzfQdadiLkIa9YQho8 by mstempl@mastodon.social
2025-10-28T12:02:27Z
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@publicvoit I use chezmoi to keep my dotfiles in sync via git across a macbook, WSL and termux on 2 android devices and it works really well. The templating allows me to adapt the files to different environments easily e.g. storage paths are different across the OS. I can recommend it
(DIR) Post #AzfU0OzI8ZqSXQ5jnM by soliman@pouet.chapril.org
2025-10-28T12:40:13Z
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@publicvoit As a "setup tool" it's really nice since on top of dotfiles, you can handle package installations, secrets, github repo cloning, etc. That's what made me make the switch.
(DIR) Post #Azgpf2qpdZX7x3Jdzc by bendersteed@pleroma.soykaf.com
2025-10-28T13:53:47.532971Z
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@publicvoit I just did the setup for #chezmoi yesterdays, so I don't have deep expertise. I have one desktop computer and one laptop, that I wanted to sync configs.The configs are not very complex, so I don't know about the configuration options in templates. There is a whole section in the documentation so it seems covered but I don't know the extend.The dotfiles are stored in a git repo that you manage on you own in .local/share/chezmoi. To add changes to the repo you need to re-add the changed files by running chezmoi add filename but you can also add them all together. With chezmoi diff you can check for unaccounted changes.In general it's a bit more polished than stow, but works on a similar idea.I would like to try #guix home, but it seemed a little more complicated.
(DIR) Post #Azgpf3zjNyFJUwUGVE by futurile@mastodon.social
2025-10-28T18:30:40Z
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@bendersteed @publicvoit Guix has 'home services' a dotfiles *and* services manager. It's a DSL and then Scheme underneath so you can extend it. Pretty simple to get started, the default method is like Stow but flexible. Plus adding things to your startup file (e.g. .bashrc) and environment variables. The capability beyond dotfiles it runs 'services' which can configure something like git, or an actual daemon. If you heard 'Scheme' and thought 'fun' then it's worth checking out.