Daily operations

Edit your dotfiles

Edit a dotfile with:

$ chezmoi edit $FILENAME

This will edit $FILENAME's source file in your source directory. chezmoi will not make any changes to the actual dotfile until you run chezmoi apply.

To automatically run chezmoi apply when you quit your editor, run:

$ chezmoi edit --apply $FILENAME

To automatically run chezmoi apply whenever you save the file in your editor, run:

$ chezmoi edit --watch $FILENAME

You don't have to use chezmoi edit to edit your dotfiles. For more information, see Do I have to use chezmoi edit to edit my dotfiles?

Pull the latest changes from your repo and apply them

You can pull the changes from your repo and apply them in a single command:

$ chezmoi update

This runs git pull --autostash --rebase in your source directory and then chezmoi apply.

Pull the latest changes from your repo and see what would change, without actually applying the changes

Run:

$ chezmoi git pull -- --autostash --rebase && chezmoi diff

This runs git pull --autostash --rebase in your source directory and chezmoi diff then shows the difference between the target state computed from your source directory and the actual state.

If you're happy with the changes, then you can run

$ chezmoi apply

to apply them.

Automatically commit and push changes to your repo

chezmoi can automatically commit and push changes to your source directory to your repo. This feature is disabled by default. To enable it, add the following to your config file:

[git]
    autoCommit = true
    autoPush = true

Whenever a change is made to your source directory, chezmoi will commit the changes with an automatically-generated commit message (if autoCommit is true) and push them to your repo (if autoPush is true). autoPush implies autoCommit, i.e. if autoPush is true then chezmoi will auto-commit your changes. If you only set autoCommit to true then changes will be committed but not pushed.

By default, autoCommit will generate a commit message based on the files changed. You can override this by setting the git.commitMessageTemplate configuration variable. For example, to have chezmoi prompt you for a commit message each time, use:

[git]
    autoCommit = true
    commitMessageTemplate = "{{ promptString \"Commit message\" }}"

If your commit message is longer than fits in a string then you can set git.commitMessageTemplateFile to specify a path to the commit message template relative to the source directory, for example:

[git]
    autoCommit = true
    commitMessageTemplateFile = ".commit_message.tmpl"

Be careful when using autoPush. If your dotfiles repo is public and you accidentally add a secret in plain text, that secret will be pushed to your public repo.

Install chezmoi and your dotfiles on a new machine with a single command

chezmoi's install script can run chezmoi init for you by passing extra arguments to the newly installed chezmoi binary. If your dotfiles repo is github.com/$GITHUB_USERNAME/dotfiles then installing chezmoi, running chezmoi init, and running chezmoi apply can be done in a single line of shell:

$ sh -c "$(curl -fsLS get.chezmoi.io)" -- init --apply $GITHUB_USERNAME

If your dotfiles repo has a different name to dotfiles, or if you host your dotfiles on a different service, then see the reference manual for chezmoi init.

For setting up transitory environments (e.g. short-lived Linux containers) you can install chezmoi, install your dotfiles, and then remove all traces of chezmoi, including the source directory and chezmoi's configuration directory, with a single command:

$ sh -c "$(curl -fsLS get.chezmoi.io)" -- init --one-shot $GITHUB_USERNAME