rcm VS vcsh

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).

I'm pretty happy with vcsh. I've used a lot of options over the years, and this is the only one I've never been motivated to replace.

weirdly, nobody mentioned vcsh[1] yet. it's a git-based tool that gives all git goodies. I use it and a couple of bash micro scripts to pull/push the latest changes upon logging in/out into shell (again bash, but seeking for POSIX or fish-based version)

[1] https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh

I feel obligated to point out vcsh [1], which is likely already packaged for your operating system.

[1] https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh

The main selling point is that you can set up various git repos for different things. I have one for SSH keys (and no, that does not get pushed anywhere except to my own private server), VIM, neovim, bash, and 'other' (for misc config files like .dir_colors, .gitconfig, etc.).

All you need is https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh

I'm using vcsh which is basically a small wrapper around git. The resulting repository is this in my case.

It’s over-engineered, but I’ve been using https://github.com/RichiH/vcsh for this for years.