#home-dir #config-file #symlink #home #dotfiles

bin+lib link_o_matic

A dotfile symlink manager with a convention over configuration philosophy

2 releases

0.4.2 Jul 2, 2024
0.4.1 Jun 28, 2024

#182 in Configuration

27 downloads per month

GPL-3.0 license

28KB
692 lines

link_o_matic

Learning Rust on my own

just one more dot file symlinker_o_matic

NOTE THIS IS BETA AND ONLY USED BY ME SO MAYBE DON'T USE THE DELETE FUNCTIONS UNTIL YOU ARE SURE I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING -- But I've been using it without accidentally deleting files so far.

uses convention over configuration principle:

Expects an environment variable LINKOMATIC_ROOT which points to where dotfiles are checked out. Doesn't have to be exported, just need to set it when you run link_o_matic

Inside your LINKOMATIC_ROOT you'll make a directory called home which will be the files/dirs you'll want linked without the leading . in the names Examples:

  • home/thing will get linked to ~/.thing
  • home/config/other_thing will get linked to ~/.config/other_thing

Expects an environment variable LINKOMATIC_HOSTNAME which is whatever string you want to represent the host you are on. Can be the same as HOSTNAME or different if you want to obfuscate your host names in your git repo.

Any files that begin with an underscore will only be symlinked IF:

  • They start with _${LINKOMATIC_HOSTNAME}
    • Will be symlinked as _machine and the rest
      • For example _bob.nvim.lua will get linked as _machine.nvim.lua only on host bob
    • Other machines should get their own dang LINKOMATIC_HOSTNAME
  • They start with one of _mac _linux and your OS is mac or linux
    • Will be symlinked as _platform
      • For example _mac.fish will get linked as _platform.fish only on a mac

This way your config files can reference your _machine and _platform files and not have to know the actual names.

Commands

install cleanup sync autocleanup implode

install

Starts in LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home

If it is a dir, it is recursed. If it is a file, a symlink is made to it. If it is a symlink, a symlink is made to its target. Its name will have a . prepended

cleanup

Looks for links in ~ that link to something in LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home Look in the root of ~, or recursively through any ~/dir that has a matching LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home/dir to avoid scanning through the entire home directory. So if you remove a top level directory you'll leave orphaned links at this point, unless you remove them from the repo first and cleanup before removing the top level directory. TODO: is there a better way?

If it's a broken or invalid link, prompts to delete.

sync

First install then cleanup.

autocleanup

Same as cleanup but doesn't prompt.

implode

Looks for links in ~ that link to something in LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home Prompts to delete.

If you create a symlink inside LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home that is a valid relative path to a file inside LINKOMATIC_ROOT, when the link is created it will point directly to the target of the symlink, not the intermediary symlink.

For example start in your dot files:

cd ~/$LINKOMATIC_ROOT

This step isn't strictly necessary but will allow tab completion of your target

cd home

Now make a relative link to your target file (you'd link to home/vimrc if you skipped above step)

ln -s ../config/nvim/init.vim vimrc

Now you will have a symlink in LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home/vimrc that points to LINKOMATIC_ROOT/config/nvim/init.vim but relatively.

When you run install your ~/.vimrc will point to your LINKOMATIC_ROOT/config/nvim/init.vim ... not to the symlink LINKOMATIC_ROOT/home/vimrc

Dependencies

~170KB