apt VS rcm

> Cron has a bunch of this kind of thing built in

At least Vixie cron doesn't support anything like this.

Each cron job that needs it has to implement it on its own, e.g.:

https://github.com/Debian/apt/blob/2.5.1/debian/apt.apt-comp...

mkdir /tmp/build && cd /tmp/build wget -r --no-parent https://github.com/Debian/apt/ cmake . ./apt install git

Look at https://github.com/Debian/apt for inspiration.

I believe there's a command line option you have to use now. Poked around and found the release commit:

Haha, commit 312e7d7310e07757c59cd7ac0f20d0b416b43026/release 2.3.12 is dedicated to Linus Tech Tip

Apt (https://github.com/Debian/apt) is a package manager, and its very concept is to connect to various repositories of software and get a list of everything available and allow you to easily install the software. Without even looking at the source I am certain this distro is connecting to many of them every time there is an apt update. This is not "pinging" as described, for some nefarious purpose it is simply retrieving data that you are requesting by doing an apt update.

Are your per-machine branches mostly distinct, or do they share a lot?

I use https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm and I find my dotfiles share _quite a bit_ in some respects (e.g. neovim config) but are drastically different in others (SSH config as one example) -- keeping things synced _across_ branches sounds very difficult. rcm handles this well, without branches, IMO.

I use https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm, which works smoothly and includes support for host-specific files

I use thoughtbot/rcm to handle my github dotfiles. Super short version after installing, mkdir ~/.dotfiles Then go through your home directory (ie. ~/ ) and mkrc .bashrc and then do the same for any other files you plan on tweaking or have custom settings for. Most of these with be in ~/.config/ but some will be in ~/ . (ie. mkrc ~/.bashrc for your bash settings and aliases)

Prior to catching the Nix brainworms and switching to home-manager, I mostly used thoughtbot/rcm.

Personally I like (and use) rcm. Everything is still in a git repository, but has more features that work well for sharing across multiple machines.

Check out https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm

I use rcm. It assumes you keep a separate (potentially version-controlled) folder at ~/.dotfiles or similar, and it provides a suite of tools for managing the symlinks.

https://github.com/thoughtbot/rcm

currently I am managing my dotfiles with rcm (ran by ansible). This approach served me well over the years but recently I stumpled over chezmoi.

Setup a Github/Gitlab account and find a dotfile manager you like (I'm using RCM - it can do more than I actually use it for).