Manage your dotfiles with yadm

Power users of UNIX-based operating systems tend to accumulate dotfiles, scripts and other files that are essential for setting up their development machines for maximum productivity. With all the effort put into this, it is a very good idea to have all these files comfortably checked into version control, ready to be installed on a new device or kept in sync across devices. There is a really useful tool called Yet Another Dotfiles Manager (or yadm) that will help you do exactly that.

One of the greatest things about yadm is that it has the same interface as git. If you know git, you already know how to use yadm. Take a look at the Getting Started guide to check this yourself. In a nutshell, with yadm init you set up a repository for yadm to use. You can add files to this repository from anywhere within your home directory (using yadm add). Using yadm commit you can stage changes and you can push them with, you guessed it, yadm push. Now when you run yadm clone on another device the files you added will be installed on the same locations as where you added them.

Scripts

Aside from managing configuration files, I find it also very useful to manage assorted personal scripts in ~/bin. I have added PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH to my ~/.bashrc (a dotfile that is of course also managed). When I add or change a script, it is a few commands away from being available on all my devices, with all benefits of version control on top for free.

Bootstrap

You don't have to do all setup and configuration using dotfiles, sometimes you may want to (or have to) use a script. You can create a so-called bootstrap script at ~/.config/yadm/bootstrap that is then run every time you install your dotfile repository on a new machine. It can also be manually run using yadm bootstrap.

For example, instead of committing ~/.gitconfig, I have added these commands to my bootstrap script:

git config --global init.defaultBranch main
git config --global alias.sync "!git commit --allow-empty-message --no-edit && git push"

That last command allows me to use git sync (or yadm sync) to make a commit with an empty message, and push it instantly. Don't worry, I don't use this power for shared repositories!

As another example, I also use my bootstrap script to set the same default applications across machines:

xdg-mime default org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop inode/directory
xdg-mime default org.gnome.Evince.desktop application/pdf
xdg-mime default calibre-ebook-viewer.desktop application/epub+zip

I even create a symlink to the bootstrap script itself inside the bootstrap script for easy access:

if [[ ! -f ~/bootstrap ]]; then
  ln -s ~/.config/yadm/bootstrap ~/bootstrap
fi

Knowing that my personal (configuration) files are stored in version control and will not get lost has certainly motivated me to put a lot more care into them. If you are not storing your dotfiles in version control, I can highly recommend trying it out. You can start with just your personal scripts or just your ~/.bashrc and expand your dotfile imperium as you go.