Add multiple targets

[nagromc]

Hi @anishathalye,

Please review this pull request allowing users to define targets.

If you have multiple hosts with different configurations, it is useful to execute a consistent group of tasks.

[anishathalye]

It's actually possible to achieve this effect in a variety of ways without adding additional complexity to Dotbot.

One way is the way I manage my dotfiles, with a common dotfiles repo and a dotfiles-local repo with branches for each machine (or category of config). I install both on every machine. I think this method works pretty well.

Another way to achieve an effect closer to what you have, with multiple targets that you can specify, is the following. You can have one file per target, $TARGET.conf.yaml, and then you can modify the install script to take targets on the command line and run all the corresponding installations. Here is an example install script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

DEFAULT_CONFIG_PREFIX="default"
CONFIG_SUFFIX=".conf.yaml"
DOTBOT_DIR=".dotbot"

DOTBOT_BIN="bin/dotbot"
BASEDIR="$(cd "$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")" && pwd)"

cd "${BASEDIR}"
git submodule update --init --recursive "${DOTBOT_DIR}"

for conf in ${DEFAULT_CONFIG_PREFIX} ${@}; do
    "${BASEDIR}/${DOTBOT_DIR}/${DOTBOT_BIN}" -d "${BASEDIR}" -c "${conf}${CONFIG_SUFFIX}"
done

With this, for example, you can have a default.conf.yaml, and say, a mac.conf.yaml and work.conf.yaml. You can install by running

./install mac work

And it'll execute all three things.

Unless there are additional reasons to add this complexity to Dotbot itself, I'd prefer to avoid the additional complexity.

[dsifford]

@anishathalye First: Thanks for your hard work on this... Came across dotbot yesterday and I'm already feeling the benefits

Anyway: I thought I'd mention that I found your above comment extremely helpful. I'd suggest perhaps adding that to the README file. @nagromc and I can't be the only ones interested in different workflows / machine.

Thanks again 🍻

[anishathalye]

Glad you're finding it useful!

Good point on adding it to the README. I'll re-open this issue, and I'll get to making the change as soon as I can.

[anishathalye]

Oh whoops nvm, this is a pull request, not an issue. See #72.

[ProfeC]

@anishathalye not 100% sure how my commit got to be in this pull request. I just added a link for reference in my commit. Please disregard.

Sorry!

... and THANKS!!! I'm really loving centralizing my config files with dotbot. Who knew!

[anishathalye]

Oh, no worries!

I'm glad to hear that you've found the tool to be useful! 😄

[borisrorsvort]

Dunno what’s wrong with the example above but I’ve not manage to make it work. I had to change it to:

configs=("$DEFAULT_CONFIG_PREFIX $@")

for CONFIG in $configs; do
  "${BASEDIR}/${DOTBOT_DIR}/${DOTBOT_BIN}" -d "${BASEDIR}" -c "${CONFIGS_DIR}${CONFIG}${CONFIG_SUFFIX}"
done

Can you verify if that makes sense @anishathalye ?

[anishathalye]

huh, not sure why the first one doesn't work for you…

[dsifford]

The reason it doesn't work for @borisrorsvort might (emphasis might) be because the expansion isn't double-quoted in @anishathalye's example.

[borisrorsvort]

After some more investigation it’s not executing the next files if they were errors in the default one

[anishathalye]

Ah, okay... that's because of the set -e at the top of the script. See here for more info.