Dotfile configuration manager

⚡ Dotfile management made easy

Simple and consistent
Configurable yet intuitive
Minimal codebase owing to a few common sense conventions

⚡ There's no place like ... $HOME!

Bring your own dotfiles and feel right at home
Builds on the tool you already know: git
No need to change habits or learn anything new

Why another dotfile manager?

Most other tools seem to be large and unintuitive for the simplest use cases. Dotcon was conceived to be easy and intuitive from the get-go, and remain that way as things grow; with minimal learning curve.

This is accomplished by establishing a few simple conventions. The main one being that everything that should be linked to $HOME resides in a directory with the same hierarchy as the real $HOME. This makes it trivial to link everything in place without complicated configs; everything "just works", by default.

Directory conventions

These are the common directories and what they're used for:

home: Everything that should be symlinked to $HOME literally.
lists: All sorts of lists for automation purposes, e.g. packages and extensions.
scripts: Executable scripts. chmod u+x'ed and added to path.
submodules: All submodules conveniently in one place. If some submodule content needs to be symlinked to $HOME, it should simply be symlinked to .dotfiles/home/, from where Dotcon itself can take over.

By default, all files in the .dotfiles/home/ directory will be linked to their equivalents in $HOME.
Naturally you can add any other directories, e.g.:

dconf
bookmarks
etc

Since some directories (e.g. /etc/) can contain files unsuitable for public disclosure, Dotcon is capable of working with different dotfile directories. This way you can have both public and private dotfiles if you're so inclined.

Features

Dotcon's primary feature is easy symlinking.
There is no need to maintain complicated configs; anything in .dotfiles/home/ will be symlinked automatically to the right path.

Features that may be implemented:

Special unicode identifier (currently ⭐/U+2B50) indicating which directories in home should be linked whole (instead of their individual files).
E.g.:
- ~/.dotfiles/home/.config/vlc⭐/ links to ~/.config/vlc/, while
- ~/.dotfiles/home/.config/vlc/ links its content files to the same files inside ~/.config/vlc/
-o, --overwrite flag: To specify link overwriting behavior:
- none: Do not overwrite existing destination files.
- all: Overwrite all existing destination files.
- prompt: Prompt for each individual file.
dotcon.toml configuration file:
- To enable easier customization of defaults.
- To enable custom linking rules (custom dir next to home).
hosts directory: To enable device-specific linking rules.
...

Installation

Note you can easily testrun Dotcon without installing, by running dotcon.py directly:

git clone https://github.com/davidde/dotcon.git
chmod u+x ./dotcon/dotcon/dotcon.py
./dotcon/dotcon/dotcon.py

To use the dotcon command however, you'll need to either install, or alias it to the binary:

# In ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

alias dot='~/dotcon/dotcon/dotcon.py'
# (Update paths to where you cloned)

The reason we're using the more unique dotcon as command/name, is that there are already a plethora of commands like dot and dotty. Using e.g. dot as a command would conflict with the other dots. However, if you're not using these commands, there is no reason not to alias to dot. The shorter the better, right?

Installing from source

git clone https://github.com/davidde/dotcon.git && cd dotcon
pip install .

Now you can just run dotcon without complications.

Usage

dotcon [-h] [-d DIR]

Optional arguments:

-h, --help: Show help message and exit.
-d DIR, --dir DIR: Relative or absolute path to dotfile directory. Defaults to ~/.dotfiles.

Examples:

dotcon
Symlink everything in ~/.dotfiles/home/ to its equivalent in ~. By default, existing destination files are not overwritten.
dotcon -d .dotfolder
Same, but for custom dotfiles location; symlink everything in ./.dotfolder/home/ to its equivalent in ~.

Repo's using Dotcon:

My very own dotfiles.

davidde / dotcon