This ansible role can be used to install my dotfiles on an ArchLinux or Ubuntu system. Well, I guess this should work on pretty much any other Debian system as well, but I haven't checked that.
Whenever possible, I try to organize my configuration files according to the
XDG Base Directory Specification.
Which means that for example the configuration files (dotfiles) for program
XYZ are placed in the directory $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/XYZ/. A lot of programs
follow this convention and expect their configuration files at that location.
Some programs don't follow this convention natively, but make it possible to
use it by letting the user set certain environment variables. In such cases, I
set these variables in my .bash_profile file. And than there are programs where
it's just not possible to place the dotfiles into a directory under
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME. For most of these programs, I don't organize their
configuration in my dotfiles repository, with just one exception bash (Why
bash? Why?).
Anyways, for the most part, the structure of my dotfiles repository looks like this:
.dotfiles
└── .config
├── PROGRAM_1
└── PROGRAM_2
So "all" this role has to do is: create symlinks in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME to the
PROGRAM_x directories in the repository. These symlinks just have to have the
same name as the target directories. And that's what this rule does, plus some
extra treatment for bash.
Git has to be installed on the system you run the role against.
In defaults/main.yml you can find the following variables. They determine the
location of the git repository holding the dotfiles, the version (branch) that
is supposed to be used, and the destination on the local system to where the
git repo will be cloned. The last variables in this list is actually not
needed, since the repo is cloned via https and not SSH, but I just have it in
here for good measure.
If you want to use this role to install my dotfiles on your system, feel free to to so. If you want it to use your own dotfiles repository, and/or put the repo somewhere else on your system, just change these variables.
- dotfiles_repo: "https://github.com/schuam/.dotfiles.git"
- dotfiles_repo_version: main
- dotfiles_repo_local_destination: "~/.dotfiles"
- dotfiles_repo_accept_hostkey: false
In vars/main.yml you can find a list of bash configuration files. The
reason for the need of that list is explained in the description of the role
(first section of this README).
- bash_configs:
- .bash_logout
- .bashrc
- .bash_profile
- .bash
Also in vars/main.yml some directories are defined that will be created. Some
programs need them otherwise they would put stuff in my home directory which I
don't want. The directory_types list is a list of different types of
directories that are supposed to be created. The other variables are diconaries
that each define a base directory and a list of dirs that are created
under the base directory.
- directory_types
- opt_type_dirs
- xdg_cache_home_type_dirs
- xdg_data_home_type_dirs
None
- hosts: localhost
roles:
- { role: schuam.dotfiles }
MIT
This role was created in 2022 by Andreas Schuster.