H's Dotfile Manager

HDM is a tiny dotfile manager that lets you:

• Organize your dotfiles into modules
• Use a different set of modules on different machines (based on the hostname)
• Optionally configure your dotfiles using JSON

HDM makes use of GNU Stow and requires it to be installed.

Dependencies

• GNU Stow
• Python (>3.4)

Installation

Copy hdm.py to a directory in your PATH

Usage

Usage: hdm [options] DIRECTORY

Options:
  -h, --help    show this help message and exit
  -d, --delete  Remove configurations
  -r, --reload  Reload configurations

The dotfiles in your $HOME are likely organized like this:

/home/user
├── .config
│   ├── alacritty
│   │   └── alacritty.yml
│   └── i3
│       └── config
├── .vimrc
└── .zshrc

Create a new directory inside your $HOME, name it anything you like, and create a subdirectory inside it, name it default or raw, and move your dotfiles inside it. Subdirectories inside your dotfiles directory are called modules.

Your dotfiles folder should now look like this:

~/dotfiles
└── default
    ├── .config
    │   ├── alacritty
    │   │   └── alacritty.yml
    │   └── i3
    │       └── config
    ├── .vimrc
    └── .zshrc

Now, run:

hdm ~/dotfiles

You can organize the dotfiles into modules instead.

~/dotfiles
├── alacritty
│   └── .config
│       └── alacritty
│           └── alacritty.yml
├── i3
│   └── .config
│       └── i3
│           └── config
├── vim
│   └── .vimrc
└── zsh
    └── .zshrc

And run the command again. Before you make changes to the directory structure, however, make sure to run:

hdm ~/dotfiles --delete

HDM lets you choose the modules that you want to link. To do that, create a hdmrc.json file in your dotfiles directory with the following contents:

{
    "*": [
        "alacritty",
        "i3",
        "vim"
    ]
}

HDM will link alacritty, i3, vim and ignore zsh. The * is a wildcard and matches every machine. If you want to include modules based on the hostname of the machine, you can do this:

{
    "*": [
        "alacritty",
        "i3",
        "vim"
    ],
    "user-pc": [
        "polybar/pc"
        "zsh"
    ],
    "user-latpop": [
        "polybar/laptop"
    ]
} 

And arrange your dotfiles directory like so:

~/dotfiles
├── alacritty
│   └── .config
│       └── alacritty
│           └── alacritty.yml
├── hdmrc.json
├── i3
│   └── .config
│       └── i3
│           └── config
├── polybar
│   ├── laptop
│   │   └── .config
│   │       └── polybar
│   │           └── config
│   └── pc
│       └── .config
│           └── polybar
│               └── config
├── vim
│   └── .vimrc
└── zsh
    └── .zshrc

Included in the repo is a template you can use.

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