yadm - Yet Another Dotfiles Manager

A house that does not have one warm, comfy chair in it is soulless.—May Sarton

When you live in a command line, configurations are a deeply personal thing. They are often crafted over years of experience, battles lost, lessons learned, advice followed, and ingenuity rewarded. When you are away from your own configurations, you are an orphaned refugee in unfamiliar and hostile surroundings. You feel clumsy and out of sorts. You are filled with a sense of longing to be back in a place you know. A place you built. A place where all the short-cuts have been worn bare by your own travels. A place you proudly call... $HOME.

Introduction

Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved.—Ann Douglas

As so many others, I started out with a repository of dotfiles and a few scripts to symbolically link them around my home directory. This quickly became inadequate and I looked for solutions elsewhere. I've used two excellent tools; homeschick, and vcsh. These tools are great, and you should check them out to understand their strengths. However, I didn't find all of the features I personally wished for in a single tool. yadm was written with the following goals:

• Use a single repository
• Few dependencies
• Ability to use alternate files based on OS or host
• Ability to encrypt and track confidential files
• Stay out of the way and let Git do what it's good at

Installation

Seek home for rest, for home is best.—Thomas Tusser

OSX

yadm can be installed using Homebrew.

brew tap TheLocehiliosan/yadm && brew install yadm

Linux YUM/RPM

wget https://bintray.com/thelocehiliosan/rpm/rpm -O bintray-thelocehiliosan-rpm.repo
sudo mv bintray-thelocehiliosan-rpm.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/
sudo yum install yadm

Or if not using yum, you can just directly download the RPM

curl -fLO https://dl.bintray.com/thelocehiliosan/rpm/yadm-1.02-1.noarch.rpm
sudo rpm -ivh yadm-1.02-1.noarch.rpm

Arch Linux

yadm is available in the Arch User Repos and can be installed with AUR helper or Makepkg

yaourt -S yadm

Other

You can simply download the yadm script and put it into your $PATH. Something like this:

curl -fLo /usr/local/bin/yadm https://github.com/TheLocehiliosan/yadm/raw/master/yadm && chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/yadm

Getting Started

I would not change my blest estate for all the world calls good or great.—Isaac Watts

If you know how to use Git, then you already know how to use yadm. See the man page for a comprehensive explanation of commands and options.

If you don't currently have a repository

Start out with an empty local repository

yadm init
yadm add <important file>
yadm commit

Eventually you will want to push the local repo to a remote.

yadm remote add origin <url>
yadm push -u origin master

If you have an existing remote repository

This clone will attempt to merge your existing repository, but if it fails, it will do a reset instead and you'll have to decide best on how resolve the differences.

yadm clone <url>
yadm status

Strategies for alternate files on different systems

To feel at home, stay at home.—Clifton Fadiman

Where possible, you should try to use the same file on every system. Here are a few examples:

.vimrc

let OS=substitute(system('uname -s'),"\n","","")
if (OS == "Darwin")
  " do something that only makes sense on a Mac
endif

.tmux.conf

# use reattach-to-user-namespace as the default command on OSX
if-shell "test -f /usr/local/bin/reattach-to-user-namespace" 'set -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l bash"'

.bash_profile

system_type=$(uname -s)
if [ "$system_type" = "Darwin" ]; then
  eval $(gdircolors $HOME/.dir_colors)
else
  eval $(dircolors -b $HOME/.dir_colors)
fi

However, sometimes the type of file you are using doesn't allow for this type of logic. If a configuration can do an "include", you can include a specific alternate version using yadm. Consider these three files:

.gitconfig

#---- .gitconfig -----------------
[log]
  decorate = short
  abbrevCommit = true
[include]
  path = .gitconfig.local

#---- .gitconfig.local##Darwin ---
[user]
  name = Tim Byrne
  email = tim@personal.email.org

#---- .gitconfig.local##Linux ----
[user]
  name = Dr. Tim Byrne
  email = dr.byrne@work.email.com

Configuring Git this way includes .gitconfig.local in the standard .gitconfig. yadm will automatically link the correct version based on the operation system. The bulk of your configurations can go in a single file, and you just put the exceptions in OS-specific files.

Of course, you can use yadm to manage completely separate files for different systems as well.

.signature

#---- .signature##
- Tim
#---- .signature##Darwin.host1
Sent from my MacBook
- Tim
#---- .signature##Linux.host2
Sincerely,
Dr. Tim Byrne

yadm will link the appropriate version for the current host, or use the default ## version.

Example of managing SSH configurations

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.—Winston Churchill

Below is an example of how yadm can be used to manage SSH configurations. The example demonstrates yadm directly managing the config file, managing a host-specific authorized_keys file, and storing the private SSH key as part of its encrypted files. This example assumes a typical working SSH configuration exists, and walks through the steps to bring it under yadm's management.

yadm add ~/.ssh/config
mv ~/.ssh/authorized_keys ~/.ssh/authorized_keys##Linux.myhost
yadm add ~/.ssh/authorized_keys##Linux.myhost
echo '.ssh/id_rsa' >> ~/.yadm/encrypt
yadm add ~/.yadm/encrypt
yadm encrypt

------

yadm status

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)

        new file:   .ssh/authorized_keys##Linux.myhost
        new file:   .ssh/config
        new file:   .yadm/encrypt
        new file:   .yadm/files.gpg

------

ls ~/.ssh

authorized_keys -> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys##Linux.myhost
authorized_keys##Linux.myhost
config
rsa_id

First, the config file is simply added. This will cause the same config file to be used on other yadm managed hosts. The authorized_keys file needs to be host specific, so rename the file using the OS and hostname. After adding the renamed authorized_keys##Linux.myhost, yadm will automatically create the symlink for it. Last, the private key should be maintained in yadm's encrypted files. Add a pattern to the .yadm/encrypt file which matches the private key. Then instruct yadm to encrypt all files matching the patterns found in .yadm/encrypt. Notice that the yadm repository is not tracking the private key directly, rather it tracks the collection of encrypted files .yadm/files.gpg. When these changes are brought onto another host, using the yadm decrypt command will extract the files stored.