Manafiles

Config file and package tracking utility.

• Manage dotfiles and system config files.
• Selectively comment and uncomment depending on machine configuration.
• Store a list of all installed packages.
• Install packages from a stored list.

Getting started

Installation

If you are using Arch Linux, you can install the AUR package manafiles-git.

Alternatively, you will have to build from source.

Configuration

Install the example configuration

During installation, manafiles will install the example config to:
/usr/share/doc/manafiles/examples/manafiles.json

From there you can copy it to anywhere in the working directory, the config file is searched recursively.
$HOME/<dotfiles>/<anywhere>

Ignore patterns

Everything in this list will get ignored when pulling/pushing config files from the working directory.
Currently two types of file matching are supported:

• literal matches a file or directory literally
• wildcard the asterisk matches zero or more characters

These behave similarly to a .gitignore pattern.

• If the pattern starts with a slash, it matches files and directories in the working directory root only.
• If the pattern doesn’t start with a slash, it matches files and directories in any directory or subdirectory.
• If the pattern ends with a slash, it matches only directories. When a directory is ignored,
  all of its files and subdirectories are also ignored.

The ignore patterns from the example config:

"ignorePatterns" : [
	".git/",
	"*.md",
	"manafiles.json",
	"packages",
	"README.org",
	"screenshot.png"
]

System config files

Directories in this list will be pushed to the root / of the system, instead of $HOME.

The system directories from the example config:

"systemDirectories": [
	"/boot",
	"/etc",
	"/usr/share"
]

Usage

Selectively comment and uncomment

Config files can be pushed from the working directory to the system like so:

$ manafiles -Fs

When pushing files to the system, manafiles recognizes special blocks and comments or uncomments them depending on the machine's configuration. Such a block looks like this:

# >>> distro=arch hostname=arch-desktop user=anon
export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin"
# <<<

This block uses all of the supported configurations, distro, hostname and user. These can be used in any combination and order.

If all of the given configurations match, manafiles will make sure that the contents of the block are uncommented. If any of them do not match, then manafiles will make sure that the contents of the block are commented.

Building

Build dependencies

• gcc-libs
• (make) cmake
• (make) git
• (make) gzip
• (make) nlohmann-json arch, debian, ubuntu
• (optional) grep
• (optional) pacman + pacman-contrib
• (optional) apt + dpkg

The optional requirements are for the package tracking functionality.

Build compilation

$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make

Build installation

$ sudo make install