Getting started

Repository setup

Either create a Git repository on your prefered platform and clone it or create one locally. This repository will contain two main elements, dotdrop's config file (config.yaml) and a directory containing all your dotfiles managed by dotdrop.

## clone your repository (my-dotfiles)
$ git clone <some-url>/my-dotfiles
$ cd my-dotfiles

## within the repository create a directory to store your dotfiles
## (refered by "dotpath" in the config, which defaults to "dotfiles")
$ mkdir dotfiles

Then add a config file. You can get a minimal config file from dotdrop's repository with:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/deadc0de6/dotdrop/master/config.yaml

It is recommended to store your config file directly within your repository (my-dotfiles in the example above), but you could save it in different places if you wish; see config location for more.

$ tree my-dotfiles
my-dotfiles
├── config.yaml
└── dotfiles

If your config file is in an exotic location, you can add an alias in your preferred shell to call dotdrop with the config file path argument.

alias dotdrop='dotdrop --cfg=<path-to-your-config.yaml>'

For more info on the config file format, see the config file doc.

Basic usage

The basic use of dotdrop is:

  • Import a file/directory to manage (this will copy the files from the filesystem to your dotpath): dotdrop import <somefile>
  • Install the dotfiles (this will copy/link them from your dotpath to the filesystem): dotdrop install

Then if you happen to update the file/directory directly on the filesystem (add a new file/dir, edit content, etc.) you can use the update command to mirror back those changes in dotdrop.

For more advanced uses: