user_files

Contains configurations and dotfiles to be deployed on a fresh linux system. These also include directories configuring multiple files configuring a single program(like X).

The files to be deployed are present in the files folder.

The name of the files, alongwith the locations to be deployed(read copied) to and the name of the files at the copied location are maintained in deploy_files.csv. See its usage here.

The script deploy_user_files.sh reads the file list from deploy_files.csv, and copies them according to the destination. Additionally, it adds some options and an unofficial repository to pacman.conf, provided that pacman exists(for Arch Linux based distros). Executing the default instructions will require superuser privileges.

Some files in the files folder are system dependent, for instance xinitrc and gitconfig. To avoid breaking other systems, if a file with the same name exists, the script will display a diff before giving the option to copy.

Usage

1. Clone the repository.
2. Run sudo ./deploy_user_files.sh.

The script takes the following options through environment variables:

• DRY_RUN: Display the deploying commands to be executed without actually running them. Defaults to disabled. Enable by passing DRY_RUN=1.
• FILE_LIST: The location of the file listing the files to be deployed. Defaults to deploy_files.csv in the current directory.
• NO_CONFIRM: Do not prompt the user for confirmation to overwrite existing files. Defaults to disabled. Enable by passing NO_CONFIRM=1.
• PACMAN_CONFIG: The location of the file containing the sed commands to configure pacman. Defaults to pacman.sed in the current directory.
• USERNAME: The name of the user to deploy user specific files. Unset by default; the script will ask for the username interactively in that case.

Files copied

The files to be copied alongwith the locations they would be copied to are listed in deploy_files.csv file.

Each line in the file specifies the files to be copied in this order:

<name of the file in "files" folder>,<name to be copied as>,<location(s) to be copied to>

For instance, ".bashrc" for the root user is defined as:

dot.rootbashrc,.bashrc,/root,

The extra ',' at the end is merely for the purpose of better csv formatting and for Github to prettify it. It makes no difference to the script whether a single comma or hundreds are appended at the end.

If the file is to be copied as the same name as in this repo, the name is repeated twice. See the line to copy fonts.conf file for an example.

If any file is to be copied to multiple locations, name them one after the other at the end of the line, separated by commas. All locations will have the file with the same name, so if different file names are desired, specify them in different lines.

It is required to define the location of the file as an absolute path, but ~ can be used to represent the user home directory.

File specific instructions

• The file firefox_user.js will be defaultly copied to ~ folder. Copy it to the desired firefox profile folder to apply the preferences.

About permissions and ownership

The files copied already have their permissions and ownership set as it is on my system. The permissions can be kept intact, but the owner is something you would want to change. The deploy_user_files.sh script currently determines the appropriate ownership depending upon the parent folder the file is being copied to, for instance,

for the file .bashrc specified as dot.bashrc,.bashrc,~

location to be copied to: /home/<username>
                                ^
                                | owner is <username>

/home/<username>/.bashrc will have owner <username>


for the file nobeep.conf specified as nobeep.conf,nobeep.conf,/etc/modprobe.d

location to be copied to: /etc/modprobe.d
                               ^
                               | owner is root

/etc/modprobe.d/nobeep.conf will have owner as root


A hypothetical example:
for the file specified as afile,new_file,~/existing_dir/non_existing_dir/another_non_existing_dir

location to be copied to: /home/<username>/existing_dir/non_existing_dir/another_non_existing_dir
                                           ^            ^                ^
                                           |            |                | folder doesn't exist, check parent dir
                                           |            |
                                           |            | folder doesn't exist, check parent dir
                                           |
                                           | folder exists, owner is <username>

/home/<username>/existing_dir/non_existing_dir/another_non_existing_dir/new_file will have owner as <username>

The <username> can be either the USERNAME option, or the current user running the script, or a specified user given to the script at the beginning.

Addtional notes

• The scripts currently do not have tests. Although it performed as expected in my manual tests, execute with caution.
• Licensing: Commits upto 7164f1e are MIT licensed. Commits after that are GPLv3 licensed.