Updot is a dotfile update script that keeps your dotfiles in sync between computers via GitHub.

• No additional libraries required*
• Ensures an SSH key is setup with GitHub for the current computer
• Supports 2-Factor Authentication for GitHub signin
• Configures local and remote git repositories automatically
• Creates remote git repository if needed
• Specify tracked dotfiles via config file (dotfiles.manifest)
• Intelligent copying/linking of tracked files from/to specified paths
• Removed files are backed up
• Self update - Script keeps itself up to date
• Support for Python 2 (2.6+) and Python 3

*Caveat: For Python 2.7+ only. See Python 2.6 Requirements

You can grab the script with the following call:

git clone https://github.com/ntpeters/updot.git ~/.updot/

Now add an alias to your shell config (ie. .bashrc):

alias updot="python ~/.updot/updot.py"

If you are attempting to use this with a version of Python less than 2.7, you will also need to install argparse manually. This can be done via easy_install or pip:

easy_install argparse
pip install argparse

If you don't have easy_install or pip, check out these links:

Installing easy_install

Installing pip

Just run updot, and the rest should be handled for you.

The script will ensure that your gitconfig settings are correct, that you have an SSH key set up with GitHub, and will configure the local and remote repositories for you.

The dotfiles you want tracked should be added to the dotfiles.manifest file located in the ~/.dotfiles directory. This will ensure that these files are linked properly and exist in your ~/.dotfiles directory on each computer. This script moves the specified dotfiles to ~/.dotfiles, and then symlinks them back into their original locations. The paths specified in the manifest should be relative to your home directory.

Dotfiles are not deleted when they are removed from their original directory, they are instead backed up to ~/.dotfiles_backup

Any additional files kept in the ~/.dotfiles directory (even if not listed in the manifest) will be synced with the repository automatically.

By default when the script is run, any updates will have the commit message updot.py update. This can be overridden when running the script with the -m or --message flags. The message supplied will then be used as the commit message for the current update.

updot -m "Add custom commit message"
updot --message "Add another custom commit message"

If you simply wish to see the status of the local and remote dotfiles repositories (without actually running the full script and updating), just run the script with the --status flag.

updot --status

The script can also be executed in silent mode by executing with either the -s or --silent flags. When run in this way all output will be suppressed.

updot -s
updot --silent

Verbose mode will output additional output during the execution of the script. The script can be run in this mode by using either the -v or --verbose flags.

updot -v
updot --verbose

You can create a more streamlined experience with updot by having your shell check if your dotfiles need to be updated at startup. This can be achieved by using the dotstat.sh script. This script will check for local and remote dotfile changes, and prompt to execute updot if any are found.

To set this up to be called at the start of a shell session, simply add the following to the end of your shell config file:

# Set path to synced dotfiles for status check
export LOCAL_DOTFILES_REPOSITORY="$HOME/.dotfiles"

# Path to dotstat script
dotstat="$HOME/.updot/dotstat.sh"

# Ensure script is available, and get it if not
if [ ! -f $dotstat ]; then
    echo "Downloading dotstat.sh..."
    curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/ntpeters/bb100b43340d9bf8ac48/raw/dotstat.sh -o $dotstat --create-dirs --progress-bar
    echo
fi
# Ensure script is executable
if [ ! -x $dotstat ]; then
    chmod a+x $dotstat
fi
# What's up with my dotfiles?
bash $dotstat

This will also ensure that dotstat.sh is installed and executable prior to executing it.

This script should run fine in either Python 2 (2.6.6 & 2.7.4 tested) or Python 3 (3.3.1 tested).