fedora-dots — personal dot-files

My user configuration, tracked with a bare git repo so files stay exactly where they are — nothing is copied, moved, or symlinked.

Repo storage: ~/.cfg.git (hidden) · Work tree: $HOME · Alias: cfg

laptop                                 Gitea                       VM / fresh install
~/.cfg.git ──cfg push──► fedora-dots ◄──cfg pull── ~/.cfg.git
     ▲                                                                    │
     └────────────── your real files (~/.config/…) ◄──cfg checkout────────┘

Current contents

.config/niri/ — compositor config
.config/noctalia/ — shell config (colors, plugins, settings)

The alias (required once per machine)

alias cfg='git --git-dir=$HOME/.cfg.git --work-tree=$HOME'

Put it in ~/.bashrc (or your shell's equivalent) to make it permanent.

New machine setup (two ways)

Automatic — the fedora setup script asks "Clone personal dotfiles?" (or use --dotfiles=yes). It does a bare clone into ~/.cfg.git, checks everything out into $HOME, and sets status.showUntrackedFiles no. Nothing manual needed.

Manual:

git clone --bare gitea@git.ku-it.org:yuri/fedora-dots.git ~/.cfg.git   # --bare matters!
cfg config status.showUntrackedFiles no
cfg checkout

(checkout may need -f if stock files are in the way — that overwrites them with the repo versions, which is the point on a fresh machine.)

Daily workflow

What	Where	Commands
Changed a tracked file	the machine you edited it on	`cfg add <path>` → `cfg commit -m "…"` → `cfg push`
Sync latest onto another machine	VM / other box	`cfg pull`
See what changed / is unsynced	anywhere	`cfg status`
Take Gitea's version, discard local edits	VM	`cfg checkout -f` (careful)

Adding a new folder (opt-in, one at a time)

cfg add ~/.config/alacritty        # any path under $HOME
cfg commit -m "alacritty"
cfg push

Nothing is tracked until you name it. status.showUntrackedFiles no keeps cfg status quiet about everything else.

Good next candidates

~/.bashrc · ~/.config/alacritty/ · ~/.config/fuzzel/ · ~/.gitconfig (strip credentials first — a secret pushed is a secret exposed, private Gitea or not)

Rules of the road

Edit + push from the machine where you maintain it (the laptop); cfg pull on consumers.
Do NOT edit files through Gitea's web GUI — that changes only the server copy; your next push silently overwrites it. Web is for reading.
cfg status clean = everything synced. Run it weekly; drift is the only real risk of this setup.
Never track secrets: tokens, passwords, .netrc, history exports. Keep those out of git entirely.

Why bare + alias (instead of a normal repo or symlinks)

A normal clone would need its files inside the repo folder — but dot-files must live in $HOME. The bare repo decouples storage from location.
No symlinks means no tooling surprises and no broken links; files are real files in their real places.
It's plain git — no stow/chezmoi/yadm dependency to install on every machine.