dotbot for Mac

Dotbot makes installing your dotfiles as easy as git clone $url && cd dotfiles && ./install, even on a freshly installed system! Rationale Getting Started Installing Your Dotfiles Configuration Directives (Link, Create, Shell, Clean, Defaults) Plugins Command-line Arguments Wiki

Rationale

Dotbot is a tool that bootstraps your dotfiles (it's a [Dot]files [bo]o[t]strapper, get it?). It does less than you think, because version control systems do more than you think.

Dotbot is designed to be lightweight and self-contained, with no external dependencies and no installation required. Dotbot can also be a drop-in replacement for any other tool you were using to manage your dotfiles, and Dotbot is VCS-agnostic — it doesn't make any attempt to manage your dotfiles.

Dotbot has many [plugins] that extend its functionality, such as: Secrets management: dotbot-age, dotbot-gitcrypt, … Package management: dotbot-brew, dotbot-apt, dotbot-yum, … OS and application configuration: crontab-dotbot, dotbot-firefox, … … and more!

See this blog post or more resources on the tutorials page for more detailed explanations of how to organize your dotfiles.

Getting started

Starting fresh?

Great! You can automate the creation of your dotfiles by using the user-contributed init-dotfiles script. If you'd rather use a template repository, check out dotfiles_template. Or, if you're just looking for some inspiration, we've got you covered.

Integrate with existing dotfiles

The following will help you get set up using Dotbot in just a few steps.

You can create an empty configuration file with:

If you're using Git, you can add Dotbot as a submodule:

If you're using Mercurial, you can add Dotbot as a subrepo:

If you are using PowerShell instead of a POSIX shell, you can use the provided install.ps1 script instead of install. On Windows, Dotbot only supports Python 3.8+, and it requires that your account is allowed to create symbolic links.

To get started, you just need to fill in the install.conf.yaml and Dotbot will take care of the rest. To help you get started we have an example config file as well as configuration documentation for the accepted parameters.

Note: The install script is merely a shim that checks out the appropriate version of Dotbot and calls the full Dotbot installer. By default, the script assumes that the configuration is located in install.conf.yaml the Dotbot submodule is located in dotbot. You can change either of these parameters by editing the variables in the install script appropriately.