Application order
chezmoi is deterministic in its order of application. The order is:
- Read the source state.
- Read the destination state.
- Compute the target state.
- Run
run_before_
scripts in alphabetical order. - Update entries in the target state (files, directories, scripts, symlinks, etc.) in alphabetical order of their target name.
- Run
run_after_
scripts in alphabetical order.
Target names are considered after all attributes are stripped.
Example
Given create_alpha
and modify_dot_beta
in the source state, .beta
will be updated before alpha
because .beta
sorts before alpha
.
chezmoi assumes that the source or destination states are not modified while chezmoi is being executed. This assumption permits significant performance improvements, including allowing chezmoi to only read files from the source and destination states if they are needed to compute the target state.
chezmoi's behavior when the above assumptions are violated is undefined. For
example, using a run_before_
script to update files in the source or
destination states violates the assumption that the source and destination
states do not change while chezmoi is running.