dotfiles

Shell environment managed with a custom embedded Go tool.

I tried chezmoi and home-manager, but somehow these tools felt too complicated. This small Go application works fine for me.

Software and Configuration

Tool	Purpose	Managed
Zsh	Shell	Config only
Antidote	Zsh plugin manager	Binary + Config
Starship	Prompt	Binary + Config
Atuin	Shell history	Binary + Config
direnv	Per-directory env vars	Binary + Config
mise	Per-project tool versions/env vars and the installer for the tools above	Binary
tmux	Terminal multiplexer	Binary + Config

Usage

The templates are embedded into the Go binary using go:embed, you can run the installer directly from GitHub on any new machine.

Prerequisites

You need Go and mise installed. The installer uses mise to install the required tools. (Note: Zsh is expected to be installed via your system package manager.)

1. View Pending Changes (Diff)

To see what changes the tool would make to your machine without modifying anything (this will also list which mise dependencies are missing), run:

go run github.com/guettli/dotfiles@latest diff

2. Apply Changes (Installation)

To safely install the required dependencies (via mise) and deploy your dotfiles to a machine, run:

go run github.com/guettli/dotfiles@latest apply

To overwrite local modifications, use the --force flag:

go run github.com/guettli/dotfiles@latest apply --force

Dependency Installation: It will automatically check your mise tools (via mise which) and install any missing ones (Starship, Atuin, direnv, tmux) with mise use -g. Antidote is installed separately via git clone into ~/.antidote, since it is not in the mise registry.

Overwrite Protection: The tool maintains a hidden cache of what it previously installed. If you have made un-tracked manual edits to a config file (e.g., you edited ~/.zshrc directly), the apply command will abort and show you a diff, preventing accidental data loss. You can bypass this with --force.

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Developing

If you want to edit the configurations:

1. Clone the repository locally:

   git clone git@github.com:guettli/dotfiles.git
   cd dotfiles

2. Modify the files inside the templates/ directory.
3. Test your changes locally before committing:

   go run main.go diff
   go run main.go apply

4. Commit and push. You can immediately run go run github.com/guettli/dotfiles@latest apply on your other machines to sync.