dotbot-crossplatform

Crossplatform linking plugin for Dotbot.

Motivation

Currently, dotbot doesn't work very well on windows. Symlinking is difficult to get working, and file paths don't work as expected when syncing with windows and linux.

I have created a crossplatform plugin that currently builds off the default link and shell tasks. In the future I will add crossplatform versions of other default tasks if I see a need.

Scope

This was started to meet my own requirements for dotbot on windows and linux. If you would like to see changes to meet your own workflow, please file an issue and I'll try to meet your needs.

Installation

Add dotbot-crossplatform as a submodule of your dotfiles repository:

git submodule add [email protected]:msdrigg/dotbot-crossplatform.git

Update install script to enable the dotbot-crontab plugin. You can do this by replacing the last line of the script to include --plugin-dir dotbot-crossplatform. For example:

"${BASEDIR}/${DOTBOT_DIR}/${DOTBOT_BIN}" -d "${BASEDIR}" -c "${CONFIG}" --plugin-dir dotbot-crossplatform "${@}"

Usage

crossplatform-link

Add a crossplatform-link task, or convert your existing link tasks to crossplatform-link tasks. The crossplatform-link task is built ontop of the link task, so much of the behavior is simliar. To make paths compatible for windows and linux, I use python's os.path.normpath to normalize both the source and the destination paths (after globbing if applicable). This command will convert forward slashes to backward slashes when using windows, so please use forward slashes to define paths in your install.conf.yaml file.

Also, sometimes I want to make different links depending on the platform, so crossplatform-link also accepts a list of dictionaries instead of just a dictionary of links. Using a list of dictionaries, you can make multiple links to the same source (See item below for an example).

Additionally, symlinks don't work with windows under default conditions, so I added the fallback_to_copy parameter. This parameter will switch to copying the file if os.symlink fails. This parameter is best combined with force: true. Without force, the files will only copy over once, and then fail to update with all future linking.

Finally, I added the platform and environment conditions. These conditions will filter for platform or environmental variables. A summary of all additional variables is presented below.

Parameter	Change
fallback_to_copy	Copy the files into the destination if sym-linking fails. Best paired with force: true. (default: false)
platform	Only link if this variable matches python's sys.platform case insensitively. Preceed with '!' to exclude this platform instead. Note: Please put value in quotes if you include '!' so that yaml will parse correctly.
environment	Only link if this environmental variable exists and matches. Preceed with '!' to exclude variable matches instead. Note: Please put value in quotes if you include '!' so that yaml will parse correctly.

crossplatform-shell

Add a crossplatform-shell task, or convert your existing shell tasks to crossplatform-shell tasks. Just as with crossplatform-link, the format of the crossplatform-shell command closely matches the shell command. The only difference is the addition of the platform and the environment parameters (same as above), and the shell condition that can be used to pick a shell different from the default shell.

Examples

Complete Example as Dictionary

- crossplatform-link:
    # Linux Only
    ~/.config/:
      platform: linux
      path: config/**
    # Windows only
    ~/.config-win/:
      platform: win32
      path: config-win/**
      fallback_to_copy: true
      force: true
    # Everything but windows
    ~/.config-all/:
      platform: "!win32"
      path: config/**
    # ONLY WSL
    ~/.bashrc/:
      environment: WSL_DISTRO_NAME # Optional
      path: .bashrc
    # ONLY WSL-Ubuntu
    ~/.profile/:
      environment: WSL_DISTRO_NAME=Ubuntu # Optional
      path: .profile
    # Everything but WSL-Ubuntu
    ~/.profile2/:
      environment: "!WSL_DISTRO_NAME=Ubuntu" # Optional
      path: .profile2
- crossplatform-shell:
    - command: cd MonitorConfig && ./installer.sh
      description: Installing monitor config
      platform: linux
      environment: DESKTOP_SESSION
    - [
        git submodule update --init --recursive,
        Updating submodules to newest versions,
      ]

Complete Example as List

Note indentation. All secondary variables need an extra indent for the yaml to be parsed as a list of dictionaries

- crossplatform-link:
    # Windows only
    - ~/.config/:
        platform: win32
        path: config-win/**
        fallback_to_copy: true
        force: true
    # Everything but windows
    - ~/.config/:
        platform: "!win32"
        path: config/**