Manage system dotfiles¶
Dotdrop doesn't allow to handle file owernership (at least not directly). Every file operation (create/copy file/directory, create symlinks, etc.) is executed with the rights of the user calling dotdrop.
Using dotdrop with sudo
to manage unprivileged and privileged files in the same session is a bad idea as the resulting files will all have messed-up owners.
It is therefore recommended to have two different config files (and thus two different dotpaths) for handling these two uses cases:
For example:
- One
config-user.yaml
for the local/user dotfiles (with its dedicated dotpath, for exampledotfiles-user
) - One
config-root.yaml
for the system/root dotfiles (with its dedicated dotpath, for exampledotfiles-root
)
config-user.yaml
is used when managing the user's dotfiles:
## user config file is config-user.yaml
$ dotdrop import --cfg config-user.yaml <some-dotfile>
$ dotdrop install --cfg config-user.yaml
...
config-root.yaml
is used when managing the system's dotfiles and is to be used with sudo
or directly by the root user:
## root config file is config-root.yaml
$ sudo dotdrop import --cfg=config-root.yaml <some-dotfile>
$ sudo dotdrop install --cfg=config-root.yaml
...
When commiting the local and system wide changes git will complain about permission. To fix that run:
$ sudo chown -R <user>:<user> <system-wide-dotfiles>