ZsHero

About ZsHero

ZsHero is a simple helper to manage dotfiles configuration.

Disclaimer

This is a project under construction. Things are not well documented and pretty simple right now. Feel free to suggest features or report bugs using the issue tracker.

Requirements

• zsh
• git
• stow

Introduction

Who a hero would be without it's sidekicks, am I right? When it comes to ZsHero, you're the Hero and git, vim and many others are your sidekicks. ZsHero is here to help you manage and version your configuration files.

Installation

There are two main ways to use ZsHero: as a submodule in your dotfiles repository or as a shell plugin. In the end, they both work the same way and I myself use a combination of both.

If you want to use ZsHero as a submodule you can manually add it or you can use zshero-installer in your dotfiles folder to configure the submodule for you.

Using zshero-installer

Just run the following command on your repository:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/raw/filipekiss/zshero/master/zshero-installer | zsh

If you don't have cURL, you can use wget:

wget -qO- https://github.com/raw/filipekiss/zshero/master/zshero-installer | zsh

If you'd rather not run scripts directly you are free to download and inspect it, or even add the module manually to your repository:

Adding ZsHero as a submodule manually

In your repository, run the following command:

git submodule add https://github.com/filipekiss/zshero.git .zshero

Assuming you run this at the root of your repository, ZsHero will be on the .zshero folder.

Using Zplug, Zplugin or other plugins manager

ZsHero can also be installed use any of these plugins managers:

zplug

zplug "filipekiss/zshero"

zplugin

zplugin light "filipekiss/zshero"

Using the plugin managers automatically makes the zshero function available in the interactive shell. If you added ZsHero as a submodule, you'll need to source the init.zsh file to load the zshero function.

Usage

Before starting

Assuming you already sourced the init.zsh file manually or the plugin manager sourced it for you, the zshero function should be available at your interactive shell.

Before starting, run zshero info. You should see something like this:

ZsHero - Version 0.5.0
ZSHERO_ROOT = /Users/filipekiss/code/filipekiss/zshero
ZSHERO_HOME = /Users/filipekiss/.dotfiles
ZSHERO_DESTINATION_FOLDER = /Users/filipekiss
ZSHERO_SIDEKICKS_FOLDER = sidekicks

ZSHERO_ROOT

This is where ZsHero was loaded from. This can be your dotfiles repository if you're using as a submodule or it can be somewhere else if you installed ZsHero using a plugin manager.

ZSHERO_HOME

This is where ZsHero will look for configuration files when installing or where it will add new configuration files when you "adopt" them.

ZSHERO_DESTINATION_FOLDER

This is where ZsHero will put the links. Usually this is your $HOME (and it's the default value assumed by ZsHero)

ZSHERO_SIDEKICKS_FOLDER

This is a folder where ZsHero will group your config files. We'll enter into details later. This path is relative to $ZSHERO_HOME.

For the rest of this guide, assume the following tree for the repository where we'll configure ZsHero:

$HOME/.dotfiles
├── bin
├── homebrew
└── scripts

These are just sample folders and they have nothing to do with ZsHero. I'll also assume that you already initialized zshero and the command is available for you in the shell (you can check by running zshero info)

Adding a new configuration to your repository

Now, we'll add our git configuration to the repository. (We'll use git in this example but you can do this for zsh, vim and basically any configuration file that lives under $HOME. On macOS you can even use configuration files from $HOME/Library/Application Support. ZsHero only cares about file structure, not file contents).

Let's say we want to add our $HOME/.gitconfig file to our repository. Simply run:

zshero add git ~/.gitconfig

You should see an output like this:

→ Created git
✔ /Users/filipekiss/.dotfiles/sidekicks/git created
→ Adopting git!
✔ git adopted!

If you check your $HOME/.gitconfig file, you'll see that now it's just a link to $ZSHERO_HOME/$ZSHERO_SIDEKICKS_FOLDER/git/.gitconfig.

That's it. Now your .gitconfig file is managed by ZsHero. You can git add sidekicks/git/.gitconfig and start versioning your changes.

Understanding the zshero add command

zshero add git ~/.gitconfig
            │       │
            │       └─────── The file to be added to the repository
            └─────────────── The name of the 'sidekick'

The add command is really simple: You tell it which sidekick is responsible for this configuration file and pass the path for the configuration file. That's it. ZsHero will copy the file to a folder inside the $ZSHEROSIDEKICKS_FOLDER named after the sidekick you chose. So, in the command above, we're telling ZsHero that the _sidekick git is responsible for the ~/.gitconfig file.

Installing configurations from a sidekick

When setting up ZsHero in a new computer, all you need to do after installing ZsHero and cloning your dotfiles repository, is run the following

zshero install [sidekick]

The sidekick name is optional. If you don't provide a name, all sidekicks will be installed. But if you run, let's say, zshero install git, only the files for the git sidekick will be added.

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ZsHero © 2018+, Filipe Kiss Released under the MIT License.
Authored and maintained by Filipe Kiss

GitHub @filipekiss  ·  Twitter @filipekiss

Logo courtesy of Aras Atasaygin and the Open Logos Project