.Dd July 28, 2013
.Dt RCM 7
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm rcm
.Nd dotfile management
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm lsrc
.Nm mkrc
.Nm rcdn
.Nm rcup
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The rcm suite of tools is for managing dotfiles directories. This is a
directory containing all the
.Li .*rc
files in your home directory
.Sm off
.Po
.Pa .zshrc ,
.Sm on
.Pa .vimrc ,
and so on
.Pc .
These files have gone by many
names in history, such as
.Do
rc files
.Dc
because they typically end in
.Li rc
or
.Do
dotfiles
.Dc
because they begin with a period.
.Pp
This suite is useful for committing your rc files to a central repository
to share, but it also scales to a more complex situation such as
multiple source directories shared between computers with some
host-specific or task-specific files.
.Pp
This guide serves as a tutorial motivating the suite. For a list of
quick reference documentation see the
.Sx SEE ALSO
section below.
.
.Sh QUICK START FOR EXISTING DOTFILES DIRECTORIES
This section is for those who already have an existing dotfiles
directory; this directory is
.Pa ~/.dotfiles ;
the directory only contains rc files; and these rc filenames do not
begin with a period. See the caveats below if this is not you.
.Bl -enum
.It
Dry run with
.Xr lsrc 1 .
Look for anything unexpected in here, such as
.Pa ~/.install
or
.Pa ~/.Makefile ,
or an empty list of dotfiles.
.Pp
.Dl lsrc
.It
Update any symlinks with
.Xr rcup 1 .
This is likely to do nothing, since your dotfiles already exist.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -v
.It
When necessary, add new rc files to the dotfiles directory with
.Xr mkrc 1 .
.Pp
.Dl mkrc ~/.tigrc
.Pp
In the other direction, you can use
.Xr rcup 1
to create the symlinks from
.Pa ~/.dotfiles
to your home directory.
.Pp
.Dl rcup tigrc
.El
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: EXISTING INSTALL SCRIPTS
Many existing dotfile directories have scripts named
.Pa install
or
.Pa Makefile
in the directory. This will cause a
.Pa ~/.install
or
.Pa ~/.Makefile
symlink to be created in your home
directory. Use an exclusion pattern to ignore these.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -x install -x Rakefile -x Makefile -x install.sh
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: DOTTED FILENAMES IN DOTFILES DIRECTORY
A less common situation is for all the filenames in your dotfiles
directory to be prefixed with a period. These files are skipped by the
rcm suite, and thus would result in nothing happening. The only option
in this case is to rename all the files, for example by using a shell
command like the following.
.Pp
.Dl find ~/.dotfiles -name '.*' -exec echo mv {} `echo {} | sed 's/\.//'` \;
.Pp
Note that this will break any existing symlinks. Those can be safely
removed using the
.Xr rcdn 1
command.
.Pp
.Dl rcdn -v
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: DOTFILES DIRECTORY NOT IN Pa ~/.dotfiles
This all assumes that your dotfiles directory is
.Pa ~/.dotfiles .
If it is elsewhere and you do not want to move it you can use the
.Fl d Ar DIR
option to
.Xr rcup 1
or modify
.Ev DOTFILES_DIRS
in
.Xr rcrc 5 .
.Pp
.Dl rcup -d configs -v
.
.Ss COMMON PROBLEM: CONFIGURATION FILES/DIRECTORIES WITHOUT DOTS
By default, the rcm suite will prefix every file and directory it manages
with a dot. If that is not desired, for example in the case of
.Pa ~/bin
or
.Pa ~/texmf ,
you can add that file or directory to
.Ev UNDOTTED
in
.Xr rcrc 5
or use the
.Fl U
option. For example:
.Pp
.Dl mkrc -U bin
.
.Sh QUICK START FOR EMPTY DOTFILES DIRECTORIES
This section is for those who do not have an existing dotfiles
directory and whose dotfiles are standard.
.Bl -enum
.It
Add your rc files to a dotfiles directory with
.Xr mkrc 1 .
.Pp
.Dl mkrc .zshrc .gitconfig .tigrc
.It
Synchronize your home directory with
.Xr rcup 1
.Pp
.Dl rcup -v
.El
.Pp
This will give you a directory named
.Pa ~/.dotfiles
with your dotfiles in it. Your original dotfiles will be symlinks into
this directory. For example,
.Pa ~/.zshrc
will be a symlink to
.Pa ~/.dotfiles/zshrc .
.
.Sh TAGGED DOTFILES
This suite becomes more powerful if you share your dotfiles directory
between computers, either because multiple people share the same
directory or because you have multiple computers.
.Pp
If you share the dotfiles directory between people, you may end up with
some irrelevant or even incorrect rc files. For example, you may have a
.Pa .zshrc
while your other contributor has a
.Pa .bashrc .
This situation can be handled with tags.
.Bl -enum
.It
A tag is a directory under the dotfiles directory that starts with the
letters
.Li tag- .
We can handle the competing shell example by
making a
.Pa tag-zsh
directory and moving the
.Pa .zshrc
file into it using
.Xr mkrc 1
and passing the
.Fl t
option.
.Pp
.Dl mkrc -t zsh .zshrc
.It
When updating with
.Xr rcup 1
you can pass the
.Fl t
option to
include the tags you want. This can also be set in the
.Xr rcrc 5
configuration file with the
.Ev TAGS
variable.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -t zsh
.El
.
.Sh MULTIPLE DOTFILE DIRECTORIES
Another common situation is combining multiple dotfiles directories that
people have shared with you. For this we have the
.Fl d
flag or the
.Ev DOTFILES_DIRS
option in
.Pa .rcrc .
.Pp
The following rcup invocation will go in sequence through the three dotfiles
directories, updating any symlinks as needed. Any overlapping rc files
will use the first result, not the last; that is,
.Pa .dotfiles/vimrc
will take precedence over
.Pa marriage-dotfiles/vimrc .
.Pp
.Dl rcup -d .dotfiles -d marriage-dotfiles -d thoughtbot-dotfiles
.Pp
An exclusion pattern can be tied to a specific dotfiles directory.
.Pp
.Dl rcup -d .dotfiles -d work-dotfiles -x 'work-dotfiles:powrc'
.
.Sh HOST-SPECIFIC DOTFILES
You can also mark host-specific files. This will go by the hostname. The
.Xr rcrc 5
configuration
file is a popular candidate for a host-specific file, since the tags and
dotfile directories listed in there are often specific to a single
machine.
.Pp
.Dl mkrc -o .rcrc
.Pp
If your hostname is difficult to compute, or you otherwise want to use a
different hostname, you can use the
.Fl B
flag.
.Pp
.Dl mkrc -B eggplant .rcrc
.Pp
macOS users should see the
.Sx BUGS
section for more details.
.
.Sh STANDALONE INSTALLATION SCRIPT
.
The
.Xr rcup 1
tool can be used to generate a portable shell script.
Instead of running a command such as
.Xr ln 1
or
.Xr rm 1 ,
it will print the command to
.Li stdout .
This is controlled with the
.Fl g
flag.
Note that this will generate a script to create an exact replica of the
synchronization, including tags, host-specific files, and dotfiles directories.
.Pp
.Dl env RCRC=/dev/null rcup -B 0 -g > install.sh
.Pp
Using the above command, you can now run
.Li install.sh
to install (or re-install) your rc files.
The
.Li install.sh
script can be stored in your dotfiles directory, copied between computers, and
so on.
.
.Sh RATIONALE
The rcm suite was built as an abstraction over the shell, Ruby, Python,
and make scripts people were writing and sharing. It is intended to run
on any unix system and support the range from simple to complex dotfile
directories.
.Pp
As such, this suite is useful as a common base. Through this we can
share tools and develop this further as a first-class entity. It is also
our hope that a common set of tools will encourage others to share their
dotfiles, too.
.Sh FILES
.Pa ~/.dotfiles
.Pa ~/.rcrc
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr lsrc 1 ,
.Xr mkrc 1 ,
.Xr rcdn 1 ,
.Xr rcup 1 ,
.Xr rcrc 5
.Sh AUTHORS
.Nm
is maintained by
.An "Mike Burns" Aq Mt mburns@thoughtbot.com
and
.Lk http://thoughtbot.se thoughtbot
.Sh BUGS
For macOS systems, we strongly encourage the use of the
.Va HOSTNAME
variable in your
.Xr rcrc 5 .
We use the
.Xr hostname 1
program to determine the unique identifier for the host. This program is
not specified by POSIX and can vary by system. On macOS, the hostname is
unpredictable, and can even change as part of the DHCP handshake.
.Sh CONTRIBUTORS
.An -split
{{#contributors}}
.An "{{{name}}}" Aq Mt {{{email}}}
{{/contributors}}
