dotfiles

"This is my dotfiles repo. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My dotfiles are my best friend. They are my life. Without me, my dotfiles are useless. Without my dotfiles, I am lost."

A bare git repo approach to keeping my shell, editor, and tools configured the way I like them across every machine I touch. No extra tools, no symlink farms — just git.

Quick start on a new machine

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rexgnu/dotfiles/main/.local/bin/dotfiles-bootstrap | bash

Or manually:

git clone --bare https://github.com/rexgnu/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
alias dotfiles='git --git-dir="$HOME/.dotfiles" --work-tree="$HOME"'
dotfiles checkout
dotfiles config status.showUntrackedFiles no

If checkout complains about existing files, the bootstrap script will back them up to ~/.dotfiles-backup/ automatically.

Usage

The dotfiles alias works exactly like git, scoped to your home directory:

dotfiles status
dotfiles add ~/.vimrc
dotfiles commit -m "add vimrc"
dotfiles log

Secrets

Secrets live in ~/.secrets (created automatically, mode 600, never tracked). Your .zshrc sources it on startup. Put API keys, tokens, and anything sensitive there — not in any tracked file.

A pre-commit hook will yell at you if you accidentally stage something that looks like a secret. It's a safety net, not a substitute for paying attention.

Forking

Feel free to fork this and make it yours — that's the whole point. Strip out anything personal, keep what's useful, and build your own muscle memory. If you do something clever, I'd love to see it.

License

MIT — do whatever you want with it.