knitter

A simple declarative dotfiles manager written in Emacs Lisp.

Motivation

I wanted some way to manage my dotfiles symlinks from an arbitrary directory structure.

For quite some time I have been using a custom organization for my files but manually creating and maintaining the symlinks, which sometimes get broken or I might forget about them at all.

knitter.el provides a way for explicitly declaring “packages” (groups of source files and their target locations) to be installed at “hosts” (directory roots or a “stow directory”).

Usage

Basic setup

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/knitter")
(require 'knitter)
(setopt knitter-directory "~/dotfiles")
(setopt knitter-packages "~/dotfiles/packages.eld")

knitter-directory

Your ~/dotfiles directory

knitter-packages

A packages.eld containing all hosts and packages declarations within the dotfiles directory

Commands

knitter-install

Install packages for a host.

knitter-uninstall

Uninstall packages for a host.

knitter-dired

Open a package in Dired

User options

M-x customize-group RET knitter for the relevant user options.

Warning

knitter is in early versions and edge cases may not have been properly tested.

There might be bugs.

Please report an issue if you find any.

The packages.eld format

Sample file

;; -*- mode: lisp-data; outline-regexp: "([a-z]"; -*-

;;; Hosts

(host :name "home" ;; Host identifier
      :dir  "~/"   ;; Directory root, default is "~/"
      :env  "bin"  ;; Path directory, default is "bin", so it means "~/bin"
      :pkgs (dunst shell)) ;; Package list

;; Minimal package declaration
;; As :pkgs is omitted, all known packages will be installed at host's :dir
(host :name "test-host" :dir "/tmp/test-host")


;;; Packages

;; Minimal package declaration
;; as :files and :globs are optional, this will symlink the target directory
(pkg :name "dunst"              ;; Package identifier
     :target "~/.config/dunst") ;; Target location

;; :files can be a list of files to be symlinked at target dir
(pkg :name "emacs"
     :target "~/.emacs.d"
     :files ("early-init.el" "init.el" "config.org"))

;; :globs can be file wildcards to be symlinked at some location
(pkg :name "mpd"
     :target "~/.config/mpd"
     :files ("mpd.conf")
     ;; :globs ("*.sh") ;; This is the same as the alist bellow
     :globs ((".*sh" . "~/bin")))

;; Renaming symlinks
;; :files can be a list of files or an alist of (file . symlink) names
(pkg :name "shell"
     :target "~/"
     :files (("bashrc"       . ".bashrc")
             ("bash_profile" . ".bash_profile"))
     ;; This is also valid, so only 'bashrc' will be renamed:
     ;; :files (".Xresources" ("bashrc" . ".bashrc"))
     )

Rules

• Any package :name must be an existing folder within knitter-directory.
• Only packages listed in a host’s :pkgs slot will be installed. Although, if the :pkgs slot is empty then all known packages will be installed.
• In any package declaration (:target, :files, :globs), the directory part ~/ is in fact just a placeholder: it will be replaced by the host’s directory root declared in its :dir slot.
  • In the example above, for host test-host, the “dunst” package will be installed as a symlink at /tmp/test-host/.config.
• knitter will throw user-errors when source files are not found and when it cannot create the necessary files. It will try and ask to replace symlinks, but it won’t replace regular files or directories.
• knitter will only delete symlinks and empty directories.

Log buffer

All symlinks and directories created or deleted will be logged at knitter-log-buffer (*knitter-log*) if knitter-log-events variable is non-nil (the default).

Related software

If knitter is too simple or too quirky for you, there are other well-known and feature-rich dotfiles managers out there:

• GNU Stow: Symlink farm manager
• yadm: Yet Another Dotfiles Manager
• chezmoi: Manage your dotfiles across multiple diverse machines, securely.
• punktf: A cross-platform multi-target dotfiles manager.