new post (git dotfiles)

content/posts/2023-11-02-publishing-dotfiles/index.md

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+title = 'Publishing dotfiles'
+summary = '''Another quick\'n\'dirty post about how I published my dotfiles.'''
+date = '2023-11-02T19:52:37+0100'
+#lastmod = ''
+categories = [ 'computerstuff' ]
+tags = [ 'git' ]
+
++++
+
+I've saved my main configuration files since years either on my
+<abbr title="Network Attached Storage">NAS</abbr> or on a git repository
+off site somewhere on the internet. I used Github for this (as many others
+did) but I started my own instance of Gitea when I created my own Mastodon
+instance at the end of 2022. I closed down both of them, my git repos moved
+over to Codeberg and because I used Cloudflare before I actually wanted to
+use Codeberg pages in the first place, but I went the rsync way. I now have
+a pre-push hook in my git repository of my website that rsyncs my hugo made
+website to my webserver... But we should stay on topic here...
+
+**tl;dr** I do have my [dotfiles][1] in a git repository on codeberg.org and I
+created the repository like:
+
+[1]: https://www.thegeekyway.com/what-are-dotfiles/
+
+First of all, create an empty directory in your home directory -- I prefer
+a hidden one, so I'll go for `.cfg` for now.
+
+```console
+$ git init --bare $HOME/.cfg
+```
+
+An alias around git with specific worktree and git directory comes in handy
+at this moment. You can also create a function, this is totally up to you.
+
+I got a function in my zsh configuration and an alias in my fish configuration.
+
+In my `.zaliases` file there is something like this:
+```zsh
+__is_available git && [[ -d ~/.cfg ]] \
+&& function aconf {
+  git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME $@
+}
+```
+
+`__is_available` is another function that checks if a program is installed.
+My fish configuration looks like this:
+
+```fish
+if type -q git; and test -d ~/.cfg
+  # function aconf --description "Add files to dotfiles repo"
+    alias aconf="git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME $argv"
+  # end
+end
+```
+
+Note, I had this as a function before (hence the comments (<kbd>#</kbd>)), but I wanted
+to try this as an alias only at the moment. I won't update this post if I
+may change this back again.
+
+Running `aconf status` in `$HOME` would print a huge list of files, we don't want
+that (well, I do sometimes switch it on again to have a look at
+files or dirs that I may have missed to add) and we can ignore these untracked files with:
+
+```console
+$ aconf config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
+```
+
+If you want these files shown again, set it to `normal`.
+
+![manpage excerpt](git-config.png "You can set it to one of `no`, `normal` and `all`.")
+
+