Reputation: 15559

Keeping dot files synched across machines?

Like most *nix people, I tend to play with my tools and get them configured just the way that I like them. This was all well and good until recently. As I do more and more work, I tend to log onto more and more machines, and have more and more stuff that's configured great on my home machine, but not necessarily on my work machine, or my web server, or any of my work servers...

How do you keep these config files updated? Do you just manually copy them over? Do you have them stored somewhere public?

Upvotes: 23

Answers (19)

spuder

Reputation: 18467

mackup

https://github.com/lra/mackup

Ira/mackup is a utility for Linux & Mac systems that will sync application preferences using almost any popular shared storage provider (dropbox, icloud, google drive). It works by replacing the dot files with symlinks.

It also has a large library of hundreds of applications that are supported https://github.com/lra/mackup/tree/master/mackup/applications

Upvotes: 0

Philip Durbin

Reputation: 4072

briefcase is a tool to facilitate keeping dotfiles in git, including those with private information (such as .gitconfig).

By keeping your configuration files in a git public git repository, you can share your settings with others. Any secret information is kept in a single file outside the repository (it’s up to you to backup and transport this file).

-- http://jim.github.com/briefcase

Upvotes: 0

andsens

Reputation: 6948

I would definetly recommend homesick. It uses git and automatically symlinks your files. homesick track tracks a new dotfile, while homesick symlink symlinks new dotfiles from the repository into your homefolder. This way you can even have more than one repository.

Upvotes: 5

Mark Nichols

Reputation: 1523

I put all my dotfiles in to a folder on Dropbox and then symlink them to each machine. Changes made on one machine are available to all the others almost immediately. It just works.

Upvotes: 1

claytron

Reputation: 1603

I also use subversion to manage my dotfiles. When I login to a box my confs are automagically updated for me. I also use github to store my confs publicly. I use git-svn to keep the two in sync.

Getting up and running on a new server is just a matter of running a few commands. The create_links script just creates the symlinks from the .dotfiles folder items into my $HOME, and also touches some files that don't need to be checked in.

$ cd

# checkout the files
$ svn co https://path/to/my/dotfiles/trunk .dotfiles

# remove any files that might be in the way
$ .dotfiles/create_links.sh unlink

# create the symlinks and other random tasks needed for setup
$ .dotfiles/create_links.sh

Upvotes: 8

Ev Dolzhenko

Reputation: 6232

Speaking about storing dot files in public there are

http://www.dotfiles.com/

and

http://dotfiles.org/

But it would be really painful to manually update your files as (AFAIK) none of these services provide any API.

The latter is really minimalistic (no contact form, no information about who made/owns it etc.)

Upvotes: 0

Blair Conrad

Reputation: 242100

I've had pretty good luck keeping my files under a revision control system. It's not for everyone, but most programmers should be able to appreciate the benefits. Read

Keeping Your Life in Subversion

for an excellent description, including how to handle non-dotfile configuration (like cron jobs via the svnfix script) on multiple machines.

Upvotes: 17

Zsolt Botykai

Reputation: 51693

Depending on your environment you can also use (fully backupped) NFS shares ...

Upvotes: 0

sebagomez

Reputation: 9619

Now I use Live Mesh which keeps all my files synchronized across multiple machines.

Upvotes: 1

DarenW

Reputation: 16926

Svn here, too. Rsync or unison would be a good idea, except that sometimes stuff stops working and i wonder what was in my .bashrc file last week. Svn is a life saver in that case.

Upvotes: 1

Daniel Bungert

Reputation: 218

I use git for this.

There is a wiki/mailing list dedicated to the topic.

vcs-home

Upvotes: 6

Alex M

Reputation: 2488

I store mine in a git repository, which allows me to easily merge beyond system dependent changes, yet share changes that I want as well.

Upvotes: 2

Pierre Spring

Reputation: 10685

i use svn ... having a public and a private repository ... so as soon as i get on a server i just

svn co http://my.rep/home/public

and have all my dot files ...

Upvotes: 2

Ryan

Reputation: 9938

It seems like everywhere I look these days I find a new thing that makes me say "Hey, that'd be a good thing to use DropBox for"

Upvotes: 7

Greg Hewgill

Reputation: 994649

There is netskel where you put your common files on a web server, and then the client program maintains the dot-files on any number of client machines. It's designed to run on any level of client machine, so the shell scripts are proper sh scripts and have a minimal amount of dependencies.

Upvotes: 1

Dan

Reputation: 63460

I store them in my version control system.

Upvotes: 2

Bishop

Reputation: 131

Rsync is about your best solution. Examples can be found here:

http://troy.jdmz.net/rsync/index.html

Upvotes: 6

Jonathan Leffler

Reputation: 755026

I keep master versions of the files under CM control on my main machine, and where I need to, arrange to copy the updates around. Fortunately, we have NFS mounts for home directories on most of our machines, so I actually don't have to copy all that often. My profile, on the other hand, is rather complex - and has provision for different PATH settings, etc, on different machines. Roughly, the machines I have administrative control over tend to have more open source software installed than machines I use occasionally without administrative control.

So, I have a random mix of manual and semi-automatic process.

Upvotes: 1

JR Lawhorne

Reputation: 3302

You could use rsync. It works through ssh which I've found useful since I only setup new servers with ssh access.

Or, create a tar file that you move around everywhere and unpack.

Upvotes: 3

Keeping dot files synched across machines?

Answers (19)

mackup

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