path: root/man/rcm.7

.Dd July 28, 2013
.Dt RCM 7
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm rcm
.Nd dotfile management
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm lsrc
.Nm mkrc
.Nm rcdn
.Nm rcup
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The rcm suite of tools is for managing dotfiles directories. This is a
directory containing all the
.Li .*rc
files in your home directory
.Sm off
.Po
.Pa .zshrc ,
.Sm on
.Pa .vimrc ,
and so on
.Pc .
These files have gone by many
names in history, such as
.Do
rc files
.Dc
because they typically end in
.Li rc
or
.Do
dotfiles
.Dc
because they begin with a period.
.Pp
This suite is useful for committing your rc files to a central repository
to share, but it also scales to a more complex situation such as
multiple source directories shared between computers with some
host-specific or task-specific files.
.Pp
This guide serves as a tutorial motivating the suite. For a list of
quick reference documentation see the
.Sx SEE ALSO
section below.
.
.Sh QUICK START FOR EXISTING DOTFILES DIRECTORIES
This section is for those who already have an existing dotfiles
directory; this directory is
.Pa ~/.dotfiles ;
the directory only contains rc files; and these rc filenames do not
begin with a period. See the caveats below if this is not you.
.Bl -enum
.It
Dryrun with
.Xr lsrc 1 .
Look for anything unexpected in here, such as
.Pa ~/.install
or
.Pa ~/.Makefile ,
or an empty list of dotfiles.
.Pp
.Dl lsrc
.It
Update any symlinks with
.Xr rcup 1 .
This is likely to do nothing, since your dotfiles already exist.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -v
.It
When necessary, add new rc files with
.Xr mkrc 1 .
.Pp
.Dl mkrc ~/.tigrc
.El
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: EXISTING INSTALL SCRIPTS
Many existing dotfile directories have scripts named
.Pa install
or
.Pa Makefile
in the directory directory. This will cause a
.Pa ~/.install
or
.Pa ~/.Makefile
symlink to be created in your home
directory. Use an exclusion pattern to ignore these.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -x install -x Rakefile -x Makefile -x install.sh
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: DOTTED FILENAMES IN DOTFILES DIRECTORY
A less common situation is for all the filenames in your dotfiles
directory to be prefixed with a period. These files are skipped by the
rcm suite, and thus would result in nothing happening. The only option
in this case is to rename all the files, for example by using a shell
command like the following.
.Pp
.Dl find ~/.dotfiles -name '.*' -exec echo mv {} `echo {} | sed 's/\.//'` \;
.Pp
Note that this will break any existing symlinks. Those can be safely
removed using the
.Xr rcdn 1
command.
.Pp
.Dl rcdn -v
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: DOTFILES DIRECTORY NOT IN Pa ~/.dotfiles
This all assumes that your dotfiles directory is
.Pa ~/.dotfiles .
If it is elsewhere and you do not want to move it you can use the
.Fl d Ar DIR
option to
.Xr rcup 1
or modify
.Ev DOTFILES_DIRS
in
.Xr rcrc 5 .
.Pp
.Dl rcup -d configs -v
.
.Sh QUICK START FOR EMPTY DOTFILES DIRECTORIES
This section is for those who do not have an existing dotfiles
directory and whose dotfiles are standard.
.Bl -enum
.It
Add your rc files to a dotfiles directory with
.Xr mkrc 1 .
.Pp
.Dl mkrc .zshrc .gitconfig .tigrc
.It
Synchronize your home directory with
.Xr rcup 1
.Pp
.Dl rcup -v
.El
.Pp
This will give you a directory named
.Pa ~/.dotfiles
with your dotfiles in it. Your original dotfiles will be symlinks into
this directory. For example,
.Pa ~/.zshrc
will be a symlink to
.Pa ~/.dotfiles/zshrc .
.
.Sh TAGGED DOTFILES
This suite becomes more powerful if you share your dotfiles directory
between computers, either because multiple people share the same
directory or because you have multiple computers.
.Pp
If you share the dotfiles directory between people, you may end up with
some irrelevant or even incorrect rc files. For example, you may have a
.Pa .zshrc
while your other contributor has a
.Pa .bashrc .
This situation can be handled with tags.
.Bl -enum
.It
A tag is a directory under the dotfiles directory the starts with the
letters
.Li tag- .
We can handle the competing shell example by
making a
.Pa tag-zsh
directory and moving the
.Pa .zshrc
file into it using
.Xr mkrc 1
and passing the
.Fl t
option.
.Pp
.Dl mkrc -t zsh .zshrc
.It
When updating with
.Xr rcup 1
you can pass the
.Fl t
option to
include the tags you want. This can also be set in the
.Xr rcrc 5
configuration file with the
.Ev TAGS
variable.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -t zsh
.El
.
.Sh MULTIPLE DOTFILE DIRECTORIES
Another common situation is combining multiple dotfiles directories that
people have shared with you. For this we have the
.Fl d
flag or the
.Ev DOTFILES_DIRS
option in
.Pa .rcrc .
.Pp
The following rcup invocation will go in sequence through the three dotfiles
directories, updating any symlinks as needed. Any overlapping rc files
will use the first result, not the last; that is,
.Pa .dotfiles/vimrc
will take precedence over
.Pa marriage-dotfiles/vimrc .
.Pp
.Dl rcup -d .dotfiles -d marriage-dotfiles -d thoughtbot-dotfiles
.Pp
An exclusion pattern can be tied to a specific dotfiles directory.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -d .dotfiles -d work-dotfiles -x 'work-dotfiles:powrc'
.
.Sh HOST-SPECIFIC DOTFILES
You can also mark host-specific files. This will go by the hostname. The
.Xr rcrc 5
configuration
file is a popular candidate for a host-specific file, since the tags and
dotfile directories listed in there are often specific to a single
machine.
.Pp
.Dl mkrc -o .rcrc
.
.Sh RATIONALE
The rcm suite was built as an abstraction over the shell, Ruby, Python,
and make scripts people were writing and sharing. It is intended to run
on any unix system and support the range from simple to complex dotfile
directories.
.Pp
As such, this suite is useful as a common base. Through this we can
share tools and develop this further as a first-class entity. It is also
our hope that a common set of tools will encourage others to share their
dotfiles, too.
.Sh FILES
.Pa ~/.dotfiles
.Pa ~/.rcrc
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr lsrc 1 ,
.Xr mkrc 1 ,
.Xr rcdn 1 ,
.Xr rcup 1 ,
.Xr rcrc 5
.Sh AUTHORS
.Nm
is maintained by
.An "Mike Burns" Aq Mt mburns@thoughtbot.com
and
.Lk http://thoughtbot.se thoughtbot
.Sh CONTIRBUTORS
.An -split
.An "Anton Ilin" Aq Mt anton@ilin.dn.ua
.An "Caleb Land" Aq Mt caleb@land.fm
.An "Dan Croak" Aq Mt dan@thoughtbot.com
.An "Daniel Watson" Aq Mt dbwatson@vectorspace.org
.An "George Brocklehurst" Aq Mt george@thoughtbot.com
.An "Javier López" Aq Mt linux.kitten@gmail.com
.An "Jordan Eldredge" Aq Mt jordaneldredge@gmail.com
.An "Pablo Olmos de Aguilera Corradini" Aq Mt pablo@glatelier.org
.An "Patrick Brisbin" Aq Mt pat@thoughtbot.com
.An "Roberto Pedroso" Aq Mt roberto@rpedroso.com