Re-adding of files which on different machines are in different locations

[halloleo]

I have the same file on different machines in different locations and for this I employed the power of templates (following this guide).

However, in everyday use I have some problems with templates: Say, I have set up templating for a file file.conf which sits either in .config/app/file.conf or in Library/Application Support/App/file.conf.

In my normal work I don't think too much of chezmoi, so when I have to change settings for the program "app" I just change its config file .config/app/file.conf (assume I am now on linux).

Then later I want to sync stuff between machines and I run

cz status 

Of course I get alerted that .config/app/file.conf has changed. I look at the file and decide it looks great. Exactly as I want it! -In that moment I am not remembering that in chezmoi this file was setup via a template, so I just do

cz re-add .config/app/file.conf

I get no error, but cz status shows the file as still modified. That is good an bad:

• It is good that at least the template is not overwritten
• It is bad because I have to look into chezmoi to realise it is a tempalte, then I have to dig out the common base file used in chezmoi for file.conf and redo the changes there.

All of this complication occurs for a file which only is in different locations, but else could be handled as one normal non-templated file.

Do I do everything right here? Or is there a better way to set this up? - Any suggestions appreciated!

[twpayne]

#2273 is the proper fix here. Unfortunately, I didn't foresee this requirement when I first wrote chezmoi. Implementing it correctly will require a re-work of chezmoi's internals that will be invisible to chezmoi's users but I have not had time to implement yet. If anyone feels like implementing this then implementing one direction (chezmoi apply) or the other (chezmoi add) is easy. The difficulty is in ensuring that both commands work when directories get renamed and you have existing state.

[halloleo]

Thanks for pointing me to that issue. Hits it on the nail.

[halloleo]

So, for now, I guess, there's nothing I can do better, right?

[halostatue]

It depends. I recently changed how my lazygit configuration is written so that the macOS version is a symlink to ~/.config/lazygit/config.yaml rather than using the template inclusion approach.

This won't really work well on Windows, but if you’re on Linux and macOS, it can be a viable approach. (I prevent the creation of the macOS symlink on Linux through .chezmoiignore.)

[halloleo]

@halostatue Great idea! Do you manage the symlink ~/Library/App Support/Lazgit/config.yaml -> ~/.config/lazygit/config.yaml with chezmoi?

[halostatue]

Yes. If you have a symlink_….tmpl that results in an empty value, the symlink is not created. But in this case, Library/ is in my chezmoiignore.

[halloleo]

And what's the simplest way to check via chezmoi whether .config/app/file.conf comes from a template or not? I use

cz managed -p source-relative config/app/file.conf

and then I look whether the file ends with .tmpl.

[twpayne]

chezmoi source-path config/app/file.conf

is very slightly simpler. You still need to look for the .tmpl extension.