dotify and beyond .. the learning continues

I have recently heard (via (Ruby5)[http://ruby5.envylabs.com/]) about a gem that helps you manage your dot-files (the hidden directories/files in the root of your home directory)

I checked this gem out by simply doing:

gem install dotify

I used it abit and discovered you can tell it manage your dot files and point it at a github repo to pull the dotfiles from.. which is a cool idea

Making my own

After a while of using dotify I realised I was using it to sync changes between my multiple desktops (laptop, home, work, etc.)

There were some other things i wanted dotify to do, that it did not. So I took the idea of dotify and made my own project. (as usual, I figured I could learn some stuff by trying to write my own).

I noticed I was using it to perform a number of steps, so I built a ruby script that clearly runs a number of steps that are based off 1 config file.

I used Debian as my OS of choice, so I take a minimal Debian testing install as a base and build from there… this also lead to the name “deben-desktop” (terrible I know!0

I am still building the process, but for far it seems to be working.

The steps I have built so far:

* Update apt sources / config
* Run apt update, upgrade and install of specific packages
* Assign groups to a user
* Configure sudo to allow certain commands without a password
* Create sym-links for certain dotfiles
* Create some empty directories
* Copy some files to certian places

The other steps I might consider:

* Install rbenv ruby 
* Install perlbrew