dotpup manages dotfiles across platforms

This is very minimalistic and intended for my own usage, but maybe others will find it useful. dotpup doesn't care about the synchronization of files, it's up to you. You may use git, rsync, dropbox, nextcloud etc.

Installation

$ pip3 install dotpup

Python 3.6+ is required.

Usage

dotpup has three commands. All of them require setting DOTPUP_HOME. Typically, you will want to have a dotfiles directory somewhere (I have $HOME/dotfiles) and set the environment variable in your bashrc or zshrc:

export DOTPUP_HOME=$HOME/dotfiles

You can start with an empty directory and use the dotpup commands to populate it.

dpup store

$ dpup store <some dotfile>

This moves the dotfile into $DOTPUP_HOME, symlinks it back to the original location and records the transaction for future automated replication (see dpup update)

This is my current dotpup.json:

{
  "operations": {
    "Darwin": {
      ".config/nvim/init.vim": "$HOME/.config/nvim/init.vim",
      ".gitconfig": "$HOME/.gitconfig",
      ".gitignore_global": "$HOME/.gitignore_global",
      ".tmux.conf": "$HOME/.tmux.conf",
      ".zsh_aliases": "$HOME/.zsh_aliases",
      ".zshrc": "$HOME/.zshrc"
    },
    "Linux": {
      ".config/nvim/init.vim": "$HOME/.config/nvim/init.vim",
      ".gitconfig": "$HOME/.gitconfig",
      ".gitignore_global": "$HOME/.gitignore_global",
      ".hosts": "$HOME/.hosts",
      ".ssh/config": "$HOME/.ssh/config",
      ".tmux.conf": "$HOME/.tmux.conf",
      ".zsh_aliases": "$HOME/.zsh_aliases",
      ".zshrc": "$HOME/.zshrc"
    }
  }
}

The reason for having per-platform entries is that the paths are not always the same. For example, vscode (which I'm yet to add) uses different paths on Linux and macOS.

dpup link

$ dpup link <some stored dotfile> <target location>

This creates a symlink to a stored dotfile and records the operation. This is typically useful when reusing dotfiles on a new platform.

dpup update

$ dpup update

This performs the operations for the current platform or (optionally) for a different platform. This is useful when you are setting up on a new machine.

TODO

Windows suppport is lacking at the moment, but I do intend to add it.