INSTALLATION
============


Note that this will only work for dotfiles stored right in your `$HOME`.
Support for configuration stored in folders like ~/.config/application or
~/.local/application is planned.


To install, you need to perform following steps:

1.  Clone repository to a stable place on your box

    For now, I'm going to assume it's local/mydots

2.  Move (and merge if needed) your existing configs to dotfiles folder.
    Remove the dot from name, e.g.:

        $ mv ~/.gnucash ~/local/mydots/dotfiles/gnucash

    This works for directories as well as files, although e.g. for bash, vim
    or git, I recommend different solutions--see below.

    Also note that you can name the dotfiles folder whatever you want;
    there's no real connection with the repository.

3.  Run mklinks script with single argument: path to dotfiles folder (or how
    you named it), e.g.:

        $ ~/local/mydots/mklinks ~/local/mydots/dotfiles

    The script will create links back in your `$HOME`, uless they (or real
    files) did already exist, in which case it will only warn you.  This
    makes it easy to exclude some of your applications from some of your
    machines: just skip step 2 for them.


Instructions for bash
---------------------

Although similar technique could be used for bash, I prefer toi have defaults
specified by distro.  Therefore I use other technique:

Instead of step 2 above, move/merge your specific ~/.bashrc changes to either
one of these, or preferably, split them as needed:

    dotfiles/bash/global-before.bashrc
    dotfiles/bash/user/<your-username>.bashrc
    dotfiles/bash/host/<your-hostname>.bashrc
    dotfiles/bash/global-after.bashrc

Then, replace your ~/.bashrc with your default distro's one, commonly found
in /etc/skel/.bashrc, and patch it with dotfiles/bash/setup/bashrc.diff:

    $ cp /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/
    $ patch -u ~/.bashrc local/mydots/dotfiles/bash/setup/bashrc.diff

From that point on, .bashrc will source appropriate fies for you, so do not
make any changes to your local .bashrc, unless you really want them to be
local, i.e. private only.


Instructions for Vim
--------------------

If you want to keep default vim-ish behavior and have all local config in
~/.vimrc, you can use above generic steps.  However, if you want to have
rather more sophisticated model, and for example use my vim configuration
as a starting point, do this instead of step 2:

1.  Merge your local ~/.vimrc into dotfiles/vim/vimrc

2.  Create a symlink to ~/.vim/vimrc:

        $ cd
        $ ln -s local/mydots/dotfiles/vim/vimrc .vimrc

You could actually have your .vimrc symlink point right to local/mydots/...
I find this more flexible, though.

### perlcritic_vim ###

Additionally, if you want to use perlcritic.vim, you need to:

*   install Perl::Critic (from CPAN)

*   put bin/perlcritic\_vim to your PATH


Instructions for git
--------------------

**Note**: For most of config I have shared, you will need at least git 1.8.
Without it, things will not work, and you might even end up with broken git!

However, if you only want to use the sharing/splitting mechanism, 1.7 *should*
be OK.  **No warranties**, though.

The pricnicple is the same as in bash section above: a new folder is created,
local config is split into parts per user/host or global one, and original
file becomes just a crossroads into these.

Except that since git does not support expansion in config paths, the fil
must be created by a script.  So what you want to do is the same as for bash
above, except that instead of applying patch to your .gitconfig, you simply
delete it and run dotfiles/git/setup.

If you have a local changes that you don't want to share, you can either put
them into the re-created ~.gitconfig, or (as I prefer) in
dotfiles/git/private/gitconfig