How to store configuration files in git

April 28, 2023

I store my configuration files as a git repository. This gives me the following important features:

I can easily setup configuration on a new machine, simply by cloning the repository.
I can have different branches (currently I am using them for different operating systems).
I can easily rollback any changes (even though I edit my configuration files in vim and I have persistent undo enabled).

Requirements

To implement what is described here, you obviously will need git. I suppose that you have some remote place to store the repository (I am using my own remote server and gitolite but I suppose that anything – for example, GitHub – will work as well). Also using a shell which allows to set up aliases makes things more convenient. I am using GNU Bash and PowerShell and both of them work.

Initial setup

To start, create a bare Git repository. I call mine .dotfiles and store it in my home directory.

mkdir ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
git init --bare

Now create a remote repository (if you plan to have something non-private in your configuration, like SSH or Amazon keys, make sure it is not publicly accessible). Add the fresh remote to your repository with git remote add.

Usage

Alias

My alias is named idf (stands for Invoke-DotFiles) but, of course, it can be named as you wish. It calls git using home directory as a work tree and .dotfiles as a git directory:

alias idf='git --git-dir ~/.dotfiles --work-tree ~'

Configuration

I strongly advise to configure git not to complain about untracked files in your home directory: idf config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no.

Adding new configuration files and editing existing ones

Use the idf alias in the same way you would use git. To add a new configuration file: idf add <path to file>, then idf commit -m <commit message>. To propagate the changes to the remote repository: idf push. To get the changes to the other machines, run idf pull there.

The same procedure works for editing existing configuration files.

Usage on a new machine

Do a bare clone of the existing remote repository:

git clone --bare <remote repository> ~/.dotfiles

Set up an alias and ignoring of untracked files as described above. Now use idf checkout to your heart’s content (you might need to do idf fetch once).