dot-sync

Synchronize your configuration files across machines

The goal of this tool is to make it simple to keep my development environment consistent across machines. I often will update a configuration on one machine, then wish I had it an another. This tool will allow marking certain files or directories, then pushing or pulling changes from a remote. This remote will likely be a github repo / gist, or other centralized location. There would still be the issue of forgetting to sync my changes, but having a single command should aid my laziness.

An alternative to this tool is keeping your configuration files in a dotfiles/ directory, then creating symlinks to the locations they are expected to be in. This tool takes a less instrusive approach by keeping the source files where they are, and allows you to easily grow and shrink the number of tracked files on the fly.

Installation

Install dot-sync using Go:

go install github.com/tylerkeyes/dot-sync@latest

Make sure your $GOPATH/bin (or $GOBIN) is in your $PATH to run the dot-sync command.

Usage

Initial Setup

Before using dot-sync, you need to initialize a storage provider (currently supports Git):

# Initialize Git storage with an existing remote repository
dot-sync storage init --provider git --remote-url https://github.com/your-username/dotfiles.git

Core Workflow

The typical workflow involves marking files for tracking, syncing them to remote storage, and pulling them on other machines:

1. Mark files and directories for syncing:

# Mark individual files
dot-sync mark ~/.vimrc ~/.bashrc

# Mark directories
dot-sync mark ~/.config/nvim ~/.ssh

# Mark files using relative paths (from current directory)
dot-sync mark .vimrc config/

2. Sync your marked files to remote storage:

# Push all marked files to your configured remote
dot-sync sync

3. Pull files on another machine:

# Pull and restore all synced files to their original locations
dot-sync pull

Management Commands

View currently tracked files:

# List all files currently marked for syncing
dot-sync show

Remove files from tracking:

# Remove specific files from sync tracking and remote storage
dot-sync delete ~/.old-config ~/.unused-script

# Remove directories from tracking
dot-sync delete ~/.config/old-app

Common Use Cases

• New Machine Setup: Initialize storage, then dot-sync pull to restore your entire development environment
• Daily Sync: After updating configs, run dot-sync sync to backup changes
• Selective Syncing: Use dot-sync mark to add new configuration files as your setup evolves
• Cleanup: Use dot-sync delete to remove outdated configurations from sync tracking

File Management

The tool automatically handles:

• Both files and directories
• Absolute and relative paths
• Directory structure preservation
• Conflict resolution during pulls

All tracked files are stored locally in ~/.dot-sync/files/ and synchronized with your configured remote storage.