atem-dots

What

A (dot)file manager using symlinks (intended for use in atem, but can also be used standalone).

Can be understood as a more powerful GNU Stow, which allows you to precisely control where in the file tree the symlink should be placed.

How

Dots operates on a file tree containing the paths you want to symlink. The location of this file tree has to be set using the files_path key in the config file (recommendation: {home}/.config/atem/files)

The files_path directory is split in multiple sub-directories, to allow for different files on different machines.

"{hostname}" can be used as a placeholder for the actual hostname (For example: {hostname}/etc/pacman.conf).

As most other symlinks are against the same subdir, you can set a default_subdir in the config file. Then, you can just omit the default subdir. (For example: /etc/pacman.conf)

"{home}" can be used as a placeholder for the home directory of the current user (For example: /{home}/.config/dots).

Ideas, contributing, bugs etc

• Dots is still very much under active development, so if you have any ideas / feature requests or encounter any bugs, please open an issue or a PR

Commands

All paths are in the format described above.

• add: Add the given path to the system
• remove: Remove the given path from the system (does not remove the files the path points to, only the symlink)
• import: Import the given path from the system
• list: Outputs a list of all symlinks on the system that are probably made by dots
• config: Interactively creates the config file

All commands (except remove, which doesn't care) can also take --copy as an argument for copying, instead of symlinking the file. This is meant for things that for some reason or another do not like being a symlink.

Note that paths added using --copy will not be detected by list, instead a list of items that should be on the system should be passed, which are then validated. Only paths that actually are on the system are printed back out.

Import

• Copies the given path from the system into the config, and replaces the system path with a symlink the the config path

List

• Paths to search for symlinks can be configured in the config file under the list_paths key

Options

• silent: suppress any non-primary output

Config file

Location

{home}/.config/dots

Format

• default_subdir & files_path:
  • key = value
• list_paths & ignore_paths
  • key = value(,value,value)
• root
  • True if specified, false otherwise

files_path

• the path to the files/ directory

default_subdir

• the default subdir that will get filled in when subdir is elided

list_paths

• the paths that list searches through

ignore_paths

• the paths that list ignores

root

• whether list should run as root

Installing

cargo +nightly install atem-dots

Usage

• This software is provided as-is: I make no guarantees that using dots wont fuck up your system, the only testing it currently receives is usage by me and a few other users.
• Please do report any errors/bugs if you encounter them