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This article mainly introduces how to use Chezmoi to retrieve your point file in linux, which is very detailed and has certain reference value. Friends who are interested must read it!

In Linux, point files are hidden text files that are used by many more complex applications, from Bash and Git to i3 or VSCode, to store configuration settings.

Most of these files are placed in the ~ /. Config directory or in the user's home directory. Editing these files allows you to customize applications that may not provide a settings menu, and they can be portable across devices or even across other Linux distributions. However, the focus of discussion throughout the Linux enthusiast community is how to manage these spot files and how to share them.

We will show a tool called Chezmoi, which is slightly different from other tools.

History of point file management

If you search for "dotfiles" on GitHub, you will see more than 100000 repositories working on a goal: to store people's point files in shareable and repeatable territory. However, except that they all use Git, they store files in different ways.

Although Git solves the problem of code management and translates it into profile management, it does not address how to distinguish between distributions, roles (such as home and work computers), confidential information management, and device-by-device configuration.

As a result, many users have decided to develop their own solutions, and over the years, the community has achieved a lot. This article will briefly introduce some of the existing solutions.

Conduct experiments in an isolated environment

Do you want to quickly try the following solutions in a closed environment? Run:

$podman run-rm-it fedora

To create a Fedora container to try the application. When you exit a container, the container automatically deletes itself.

Installation problem

If you store the point files in the Git repository, you must want to make the changes automatically applied to the home directory. At first glance, the easiest way is to use symbolic links, such as ln-s ~ / .bashrc. This allows your changes to be ready immediately when you update the repository.

The problem with symbolic links is that managing symbolic links can be cumbersome. Stow and RCM (described in Fedora magazine) can help you manage these, but these are not very comfortable solutions. After downloading, you need to make appropriate modifications to the private file and set the access mode. If you modify some files on one system and then download the repository to another system, conflicts may occur and troubleshooting may be required.

Another way to solve this problem is to write your own installation script. This is the most flexible option, but it weighs whether it is worth spending more time building a custom solution.

Confidential information problem

Git is designed to track changes. If you store confidential information such as passwords or API keys in the Git repository, it will be troublesome and need to rewrite the Git history to delete the confidential information. If your repository is public, your confidential information will no longer be kept secret if someone else downloads your repository. This problem alone will prevent many people from sharing their point files with the public world.

Multiple device configuration issu

The problem is not how to pull the configuration to multiple devices, but when you have multiple devices that require different configurations. Most people deal with this problem by using different folders or using different replica fork. This makes it difficult to share configurations between different devices and role sets.

How does Chezmoi do it

Chezmoi is a tool for managing point files that takes into account the above issues and does not blindly copy or symbolic link files from the repository. Chezmoi is more like a template engine, generating your point files based on system variables, templates, Confidential Information Manager and Chezmoi's own configuration files.

Getting started with Chezmoi

Currently, Chezmoi is not in the default library of Fedora. You can download the current version of Chezmoi using the following command.

$sudo dnf install https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi/releases/download/v1.7.17/chezmoi-1.7.17-x86_64.rpm

This will install the prepackaged RPM into your system.

Let's continue to create your repository using the following methods:

$chezmoi init

It will create your new repository in ~ / .local/share/chezmoi/. You can easily change to this directory using the following command:

$chezmoi cd

Let's add the first file:

Chezmoi add / .bashrc

This adds your .bashrc file to the chezmoi repository.

Note: if your .bashrc file is actually a symbolic link, you need to add the-f flag to follow it to read the contents of the actual file.

You can now edit the file using the following command:

$chezmoi edit ~ / .bashrc

Now let's add a private file, which is a file with 600 or similar permissions. I have a file in .ssh / config that I want to add by using the following command:

$chezmoi add ~ / .ssh/config

Chezmoi uses special prefixes to track hidden and private files to address the limitations of Git. Run the following command to view it:

$chezmoi cd

Note that files marked as private are not actually private, they will still be saved in your Git repository in plain text format. I will explain it further later.

You can apply any changes using the following methods:

$chezmoi apply

And use the following command to check the difference:

$chezmoi diff uses variables and templates

To export all the data that Chezmoi can collect, run:

$chezmoi data

Most of these are information about the user name, schema, hostname, operating system type, and operating system name. But you can also add our own variables.

Continue, run:

$chezmoi edit-config

Then enter the following:

[data] email = "fedorauser@example.com" name = "Fedora Mcdora"

Save the file and run chezmoi data again. You will see at the bottom that your email and name have been added successfully. Now, you can use these with Chezmoi templates. Run:

$chezmoi add-T-autotemplate ~ / .gitconfig

To add your .gitconfig to Chezmoi as a template. If Chezmoi successfully infers the template correctly, you will get the following information:

[user] email = "{{.email}}" name = "{{.name}}"

If not, you can change the file to this.

Check the file using the following methods:

$chezmoi edit ~ / .gitconfig

Then use:

$chezmoi cat ~ / .gitconfig

To see what Chezmoi generates for this file. The example I generated is as follows:

[root@a6e273a8d010 ~] # chezmoi cat ~ / .gitconfig [user] email = "fedorauser@example.com" name = "Fedora Mcdora" [root@a6e273a8d010 ~] #

It will generate a file full of variables in our Chezmoi configuration. You can also use variables to execute simple logical statements. One example is:

{{- if eq .chezmoi.hostname "fsteel"} # this section is included if the hostname is "fsteel" {{- end}}

Note that for it to work properly, the file must be a template. You can check to see if the file appends .tmpl to the file name in chezmoi cd or use the-T option to read the file.

Keep confidential information confidential

To troubleshoot the settings, use the following command.

$chezmoi doctor

The important thing here is that it also shows you the password managers that are supported.

[root@a6e273a8d010 ~] # chezmoi doctor warning: version dev ok: runtime.GOOS linux, runtime.GOARCH amd64 ok: / root/.local/share/chezmoi (source directory, perm 700) ok: / root (destination directory, perm 550) ok: / root/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml (configuration file) ok: / bin/bash (shell) ok: / usr/bin/vi (editor) warning: vimdiff (merge command Not found) ok: / usr/bin/git (source VCS command, version 2.25.1) ok: / usr/bin/gpg (GnuPG, version 2.2.18) warning: op (1Password CLI, not found) warning: bw (Bitwarden CLI, not found) warning: gopass (gopass CLI, not found) warning: keepassxc-cli (KeePassXC CLI, not found) warning: lpass (LastPass CLI, not found) warning: pass (pass CLI, not found) warning: vault (Vault CLI, Vault CLI) [not found] #

You can use these clients, you can use generic clients, or you can use the system's keyring.

For GPG, you need to add the following to the configuration using the following command:

$chezmoi edit-config [gpg] recipient = "

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