Managing Dot Files with Git

Create a .dotfiles folder, which we'll use to track your dotfiles

git init --bare $HOME/.dot

Create a dot alias that uses .dot as the git repository and your $HOME as the working directory. Make sure to add it to your .bashrc or .zshrc

alias dot='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dot --work-tree=$HOME'

You can now use dot to manage any file in your home directory.

Restoring Dot Files

Add .dot to .gitignore to prevent weird recursion issues.

echo ".dot" >> .gitignore

Clone your dotfiles in a bare git repository.

git clone --bare git@github.com:folke/dot.git $HOME/.dot

Define the alias

alias dot='git --git-dir=$HOME/.dot --work-tree=$HOME'

Checkout your dotfiles!

dot checkout

If you get errors about existing files, back them up first and retry

mkdir -p .dot-backup && \
dot checkout 2>&1 | egrep "\s+\." | awk {'print $1'} | \
xargs -I{} mv {} .dot-backup/{}