alejandroperea/dotfiles

MY DOTFILES

Clone onto your laptop:

> git clone git://github.com/alejandroperea/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

You can install them with make:

> make
# OR
> make install

And use the clean rule to uninstall them:

> make clean

If you want to install only one set of dotfiles, for example git, run:

> make git
# To clean
> make clean_git

Makefile

If you check the Makefile you'll see that is quite simple. In fact, there is no rules to install anything. The trick is in this line:

include **/*.mk

What the Makefile is doing here is searching for any .mk file in the directories' tree and if it finds one, it includes all of the file's rules.

The dotfiles for each app/module are in their own directory (e.g: vim or zsh), and inside those directories there is a .mk file (e.g: vim.mk or zsh.mk).

Each of these .mk files is a new Makefile with the rules to install that module. In order to make these .mk files to work with the main Makefile, they need to be created with a structure. This could be a template for a new module:

MODULE := $(shell command -v module 2>/dev/null)

ifdef MODULE
	INSTALLERS += module
	CLEANERS   += clean_module

	MODULE_SRC_DIR := $(DOTFILES)/module
	MODULE_DST_DIR := $(CONFIG_DIR)/module

  .PHONY: module clean_module

  module: dotfile_install_module

  clean_module: dotfile_clean_module
else
	@echo "Module is not installed"
endif

The most important part of this file is when we append values to INSTALLERS and CLEANERS variables. These variables are the main registries of rules for installation and cleaning. They are used by the main Makefile to know what rules it should call when running the install and clean rules.

The dotfile_install_% and dotfile_clean_% rules are a simple way to show when a module starts its installation and cleaning rules. Add them as the first prerequisite of your rules to use them.

The idea is to keep each set of dotfiles modular, so if you need to add or remove something it shouldn't affect other files or the main installation process.

CREDITS

Many thanks to David Ruiz, Juan Hernández and Fran Casas to share their Makefile configuration in their dotfiles (https://github.com/davidruizrodri/dotfiles, https://github.com/jhbabon/dotfiles and https://github.com/franciscoj/dot-files). It has been really useful to make my own configuration! Thanks guys!