Dotfiles and Custom Images

Heus-Sueh · February 14, 2024, 5:52pm

What would be the best way to integrate dotfiles and custom images?

I’m trying to create a sway image with dotfiles, but the solution I found to deal with this may not be better, I’m dealing with the dotfiles directly in the image instead of having a script that clones a git repository and copies the files to the user’s home on the first boot, what would be the best solution in this case? I thought about using chezmoi together with yafti, but I don’t know if that will work

ethanjli · February 15, 2024, 5:03am

How would you feel about adding a custom justfile command (or, for a more automated experience, a systemd user service running a custom script) which ensures that you have the latest version of your dotfiles, e.g. applied with chezmoi?

fenglengshun · February 15, 2024, 9:04am

I just put mine in /usr/etc/skel. It’s not always updated though - skel is only copied at user creation, so I still need to periodically copy my files to my repo.

The other thing that I’ve been doing is putting my files in my home-manager repo, and using tmpfiles to symlink them so that the files in the local repo is always updated and I just need to commit and push them to GH repo.

j0rge · February 15, 2024, 4:04pm

If someone wanted to do a completely automated chezmoi setup I would ship that by default in Bluefin! It’d be nice to just have this ootb.

Heus-Sueh · February 15, 2024, 8:08pm

That would be cool and would help a lot

mecattaf · February 28, 2024, 9:22pm

Opened an issue about this in blue-build/modules:

github.com/blue-build/modules

module idea: chezmoi

opened 09:07PM - 27 Feb 24 UTC

mecattaf

Thanks so much for this project! ### Context Creating an automatic .config (…dotfiles) management system with chezmoi can make our lives a lot easier. Most of us already have our dotfiles in a github repo, so this module could make our experience a lot smoother. ### Requirements: We need a bash script that manages dotfiles with chezmoi: 1) pulls and updates the dotfiles every time the computer is turned on 2) pushes the changes to git every time the config files are updated (in ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml set autoCommit and autoPush) And a systemd service to do this automatically (LLM-generated skeleton) - chezmoi-auto.service: ``` [Unit] Description=Automatically update dotfiles with chezmoi After=network-online.target [Service] Type=oneshot ExecStart=/path/to/your/script/chezmoi-auto.sh [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target ``` - chezmoi-auto.sh ``` #!/usr/bin/env bash # Exit immediately if a command exits with a non-zero status. set -e # Pull the latest changes for your dotfiles from the source repository. # chezmoi update will fetch and apply the latest changes. chezmoi update # Uncomment the following lines if your chezmoi configuration does not automatically commit and push changes, # and you would like this script to do so. Ensure you have configured git credentials correctly for non-interactive use. # cd $(chezmoi source-path) # git add . # git commit -m "Automatic update by chezmoi-auto.sh script" # git push # Notification example (optional, for desktop environments that support libnotify) # notify-send "Chezmoi Update" "Your dotfiles have been updated successfully." ``` ### Using the module: Bluebuild users could point this module to their dotfiles with: ``` chezmoi: username: {username} ``` Setting up chezmoi the first time (from the docs): ``` chezmoi's install script can run chezmoi init for you by passing extra arguments to the newly installed chezmoi binary. If your dotfiles repo is github.com/$GITHUB_USERNAME/dotfiles then installing chezmoi, running chezmoi init, and running chezmoi apply can be done in a single line of shell: $ sh -c "$(curl -fsLS get.chezmoi.io)" -- init --apply $GITHUB_USERNAME If your dotfiles repo has a different name to dotfiles, or if you host your dotfiles on a different service, then see the reference manual for chezmoi init. For setting up transitory environments (e.g. short-lived Linux containers) you can install chezmoi, install your dotfiles, and then remove all traces of chezmoi, including the source directory and chezmoi's configuration directory, with a single command: $ sh -c "$(curl -fsLS get.chezmoi.io)" -- init --one-shot $GITHUB_USERNAME ``` ### Relevant Chezmoi docs: - [Concepts](https://www.chezmoi.io/reference/concepts) - [Daily Operations Guide](https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/daily-operations/) Idea from [ublue forums](https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/dotfiles-and-custom-images/596)

exponentactivity · April 30, 2024, 8:14pm

Please check out this pull request for this feature.

visnu_Deva · November 16, 2024, 9:39am

How do you deal with the dotfiles directly in the image ? i am having difficutly doing that, it seems it doesn’t want to go to .config, can you share something please.

tulilirockz · November 16, 2024, 5:30pm

Would this still be interesting? Bluebuild’s implementation seems pretty nice, I could port it over to Bluefin quite easily following their steps. I personally dont know if it would be super cool to mess around with people’s $HOMEs tho…

tulilirockz · November 16, 2024, 5:30pm

If you are using BlueBuild just use their module, otherwise it is kind of a complicated implementation to figure out if you havent done something like that already

visnu_Deva · November 16, 2024, 7:53pm

Yes I am using bluebuild, can you be more specific please because I tried to set it up in their recipe file if it is what you mean and also I tried with a script but I don’t get the result I want which is simply to copy my dotfiles into the .config folder but I can copy them elsewhere for some reason which may not be very useful.

lorduskordus · November 16, 2024, 9:18pm

Stuff you put into /etc/skel gets copied to a new user’s $HOME automatically. Put your dotfiles in there

visnu_Deva · November 17, 2024, 5:12am

Thanx for your answer, I will try that.

visnu_Deva · November 19, 2024, 12:54pm

I did as you said, put the dotfiles in the etc/skel/.config folder and added the source and destination in the modules of the recipe then created a new user on my laptop and after rebooting all the dotfiles got copied at the right place.
Thank you very much !

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