Managing user configuration files across multiple computers

Question

I commonly work on multiple computers. I have various configuration files, eg, .bashrc, .gitconfig, .irbrc, .vimrc and configuration folders, eg, .vim/ that contain valuable customizations. Sometimes I want small variations in configuration between the different computers.

I want to use version control to manage these different files.

• do others use version control to manage their configuration files?
• what are some hints that might make this easier?
• what's the most elegant way of dealing with variations between the computers?
• I'm comfortable with git; any other suggestions?

Answer 1

I keep a folder at ~/config/ which is a bzr repository. I push/pull the repository between my various computers to sync it up. I have an install script which I use to make symlinks to my home directory:

#! /bin/sh # link all files to the home directory, asking about overwrites cd `dirname $0` SCRIPT_DIR=`pwd` SCRIPT_NAME=`basename $0` FILES=`bzr ls --versioned --non-recursive`  cd $HOME for FILE in $FILES; do     ln --symbolic --interactive $SCRIPT_DIR/$FILE done rm $TARGET_DIR/$SCRIPT_NAME 

If you want to use git instead of bzr, you can instead use:

FILES=`git ls-tree --name-only HEAD` 

(I had to ask SO to figure that out)

EDIT: I don't actually do this anymore, now I have a dotfiles repo on github, with a nice rake install script that someone else wrote.