AutoYADM

• AutoYADM
  • Features
  • Installation
  • Usage
    • Tracking
    • Ignoring Certain Files
    • Committing & Pushing
    • Calling AutoYADM Automatically
  • Contributing

AutoYADM is a small shell utility to automate the process of managing dotfiles with YADM by allowing the user to define a list of files & directories to be automatically added, committed and pushed whenever the script is run. Most notably, AutoYADM accounts for newly created files previously untracked by YADM.

The benefits of this approach:

1. Robust version control thanks to YADM and Git.
2. You won't forget to commit new files in important folders.
3. Maintain control over paths to auto-commit, and paths to only manually commit.

I have personally been using AutoYADM to sync my dotfiles between devices without any problems since October 2024.

Features

• Configure a list of files & directories to be automatically tracked by YADM.
• Tracked directories will also track any new files inside them!
• Automatically add, commit, and push tracked paths.
• .ignore/.gitignore support with fd.

Installation

Simply clone the repository:

git clone https://git.ficd.sh/ficd/autoyadm

You may consider adding aliases to your shell configuration:

alias autoyadm="/path/to/autoyadm/autoyadm.sh"
alias yadmadd="/path/to/autoyadm/yadmadd.sh"
# To enable automatic pushing:
alias autoyadm="AUTOYADMPUSH=1 /path/to/autoyadm/autoyadm.sh"

Dependencies:

• YADM
• git
• fd (optional, but recommended)
  • fallback to find otherwise
• openssh (required for pushing)

Usage

Note: The following assumes you have created shell aliases to the two scripts. You may, of course, simply call them directly.

Tracking

AutoYADM maintains a list of files and directories for automatic tracking. All children of tracked directories will be tracked, including newly created, previously untracked files. For example, if you add your Neovim configuration at ~/.config/nvim to tracking, then any new files you create inside that folder will automatically be added and committed by AutoYADM.

The tracking file is stored in ~/.config/yadm/tracked. $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is respected. The file will be automatically created if it doesn't already exist. You can even add it to tracking: yadmadd ~/.config/yadm/tracked

Important: Symlinks are not added; this is to avoid conflicts with yadm alt

The tracking file contains the paths to tracked files & directories relative to $HOME. For example:

.bashrc
.config/nvim

To add paths to be tracked, you may use yadmadd.sh. Any valid absolute or relative path should work.

$ yadmadd ~/.bashrc
$ yadmadd /home/username/.bashrc
# Relative paths work too.
$ yadmadd ../../.bashrc
# You may supply any number of paths as arguments.
$ yadmadd .bashrc .zshrc .config/nvim

To remove a target from tracking, simply delete it from the tracked file.

Ignoring Certain Files

It's possible to ignore certain patterns inside a folder you're otherwise tracking with yadmadd. For example, suppose you've added .config/foo, but you want to specifically ignore .config/foo/bar.log. You can use a .ignore/.gitignore file for this:

echo "bar.log" > ~/.config/foo/.ignore

The .ignore/.gitignore file must be in the root of the directory you've added with yadmadd. You also need fd available on your $PATH for ignoring to work.

Committing & Pushing

To automatically add and commit your tracking targets, use autoyadm.sh:

$ autoyadm

By default, automatic pushing is disabled. You can enable it with an environment variable:

$ export AUTOYADMPUSH=1
$ autoyadm
# Or you can combine these into one line:
$ AUTOYADMPUSH=1 autoyadm

Note: For auto push to work, ssh-agent must be enabled, and the environment file needs to exist inside ~/.ssh. Furthermore, you must have SSH setup with your git host.

Calling AutoYADM Automatically

By default, AutoYADM only runs when the user calls it explicitly. If you want to automate this process, you are responsible for setting it up yourself. You may consider configuring a cron job for this. The following example will run AutoYADM every 15 minutes, with automatic push enabled, appending its output to a log file:

*/15 * * * * AUTOYADMPUSH=1 /path/to/autoyadm/audoyadm.sh >> /path/to/log/file.log

If you are on Arch Linux, you can follow these instructions to set up the cron job:

# Install a cron daemon if you
# don't already have one.
$ sudo pacman -S cronie
# This command will open your $EDITOR,
# you may paste the above cron job configuration here
# and save the file to apply your changes.
$ crontab -e
# Don't forget to enable cronie.service:
$ systemctl enable cronie
$ systemctl start cronie