Workstation Backup via Git

He does his configuration Management sice years with git and without Symlinks. His Solution is more than simple:

create an empy bare git repo

git init --bare $HOME/.cfg

whith this Step you hace a repo inside your home directory $HOME/.cfg . Inside there are laying your git management files.

set username and email

git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "youremail@yourdomain.com"

create an alias

alias config="git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME"

execute this ONCE

config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

if you execute it more than once, all your Home Files would be marked always as untracked. If you execute config status.

Now you can use the command config as you would do with git.

config status / commit / pull / push ... merge, rebase, reset...

If you have now a file or a folder which you want to add to your dotfiles, then simply add it:

config add .vim
config commit -m "My new VIM config"
config push

you can of course set an upstream URLto Github / Gitlab / Gitea etc. and push it

git clone --bare https://...../dotfiles.git $HOME/.cfg

codevoid has created the following ksh aliases (should also work for bash)

# config command
alias config='git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg/ --work-tree=$HOME'

# I'm lazy, so just commit with some machine info
function dotfiles_autoupdate {
    config add -u && \
    config commit -m "Update $(date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M") $(uname -s)/$(uname -m)" && \
    config push
}

 # please give me my dotfiles...
 function dotfiles_init {
     git --no-replace-objects clone --bare \
         git@codevoid.de:dotfiles.git $HOME/.cfg
     config config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
     config checkout -f
 }

you can find this and more in his dotfiles: https://codevoid.de/?q=/1/git/dotfiles/files.gph Attention:

Do not commit passwords!!! This sounds logical but is sometimes not so simple. Many programs / config folder can possibly contain cached passwords (vim) and you should also consider to create sample files like .configfile.sample containing only "******************" instead the real password. But that's only one example. learn to commit with: --rebase, stash sometimes you change something on a not up-to-date branch. Because of that he advises in general

config pull --rebase # instad with config pull

if there are some uncommitted changes in your git repo, you could do the following:

config stash
config pull --rebase
config stash apply

Guide by codeviod on uugrn(at)mailman.uugrn.org, translated into english by me (tinfoil-hat)