example.md

Here's a neat trick.

I treat my git clones as disposable between computers, but keep my project-specific dotfiles (usually containing environment variables, individual configurations, and so on) synced across devices in iCloud. Then, this script is just a matter of adding symlinks for each of the dotfiles I've saved for each of my projects to each of their clones.

So if my dotfiles are saved like this:

$ tree -a ~/icloud-drive/dotfiles/project-dotfiles/
/Users/justin/icloud-drive/dotfiles/project-dotfiles/
├── searls
│   ├── fine_ants_app
│   └── searls.github.com
│       └── .rgignore
└── testdouble
    ├── scheduled-merge
    │   └── .env
    └── testdouble.js
        ├── .projections.json
        ├── .rgignore
        └── .vimrc

And my repos are organized symmetrically:

$ tree -a ~/code
/Users/justin/code/
├── searls
│   ├── fine_ants_app
│   └── searls.github.com
└── testdouble
    ├── scheduled-merge
    └── testdouble.js

Then I can run project-dotfiles-link, at any point and it'll make sure each of those working copies have links to my synchronized dotfiles.

project-dotfiles-add

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# necessary because project-specific dotfiles will almost always match a global
# or project-level gitignore, so we need to make sure we add them by force here

git add --force "$ICLOUD_DRIVE/dotfiles/project-dotfiles"
git status

project-dotfiles-link

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

dotfiles_base = "#{ENV['ICLOUD_DRIVE']}/dotfiles/project-dotfiles"
code_base = "#{ENV['HOME']}/code"

puts "Searching for project-dotfiles in #{dotfiles_base}"
Dir["#{dotfiles_base}/*"].each do |org|
  Dir["#{org}/*"].each do |dotfiles_dir|
    project_dir = dotfiles_dir.gsub(dotfiles_base, code_base)
    if File.directory?(project_dir)
      dotfiles = Dir.glob("#{dotfiles_dir}/*", File::FNM_DOTMATCH)
      (dotfiles - ["#{dotfiles_dir}/.", "#{dotfiles_dir}/.."]).each do |file|
        link_dest = "#{project_dir}/#{File.basename(file)}"
        if !File.exist?(link_dest)
          puts "Linking #{link_dest}"
          File.symlink(file, link_dest)
        else
          puts "Link already exists #{link_dest} - Skipping."
        end
      end
    else
      puts "Dotfiles found in #{dotfiles_dir} but project not cloned. Skipping."
    end
  end
end