What does HackerNews think of mackup?

I moved away from using a dotfiles repo a few years ago because I kept forgetting to add/commit files as I changed them.

Instead I use mackup[0] which automatically manages symlinks to your Dropbox/Drive/Share and has support for a huge amount of software by default. You can also manually add “extra” files you wish to track if you like.

[0] https://github.com/lra/mackup

May I recommend: https://github.com/lra/mackup

I just use this https://github.com/lra/mackup since a decade

For the MacOS users out there, Mackup is pretty nice.

https://github.com/lra/mackup

It's probably awful but I sorta really just rely on system backups for my configs. Download and restore anything I'm missing from the latest backup when I reinstall the system.

I do keep my ~/scripts/ directory in a git repo (also this directory is in my $PATH) because they're all very hack and slash "I need to do a thing repeatedly, quickly" scripts. Sometimes I might want to go back a step or two when I really break everything. This repo auto pulls/commitpushes every now and then as this one is more useful to be up to date on all machines than to have useful commit messages

As for live syncing devices I do have unison running on my laptop frequently to sync (when its on) a few directories I might need offline. Mostly everything I need as a dev is in git repos though, so I use manual git push/pulls to sync everything else

I did previously use mackup (https://github.com/lra/mackup) to sync configs but if I'm honest I forgot I had it set up the last time I reinstalled so it got removed from the process unintentionally

I use https://github.com/lra/mackup and love it. Takes care also about application configs.

Another alternative (that I'm surprised isn't already mentioned) is https://github.com/lra/mackup.

What it does:

1. moves your dot files and whatnot into DropBox (or Box or Google drive or whatever)

2. symlinks the moved file to the original location

I use OSX.

Projects: I have a Shared folder on ~ which has bidirectional sync with my desktop (with Resilio[1]). Inside that folder are my current projects. The old ones, are on private git repos (the codebase) and on backblaze (full replicated production project, with rclone[2]). I use Resilio because its fast, reliable and it supports ignore patters (eg node_modules)

Dotfiles: For syncing my dotfiles, ssh keys and app settings across my machines I use Mackup[3]. Life saving tool. My macbook has the exact same settings as my desktop and vice versa. I keep all my settings in a Dropbox folder and they are symlinked automatically on the machine.

General: I have 3 subfolders on Downloads. Chrome, Attachments and Torrents. Each one is self explanatory. I like my downloads to be organized, because I clean them up occasionally. I use Desktop as a temp area, therefore I don't have permanent files there. All my documents (financial, reports etc) are on Dropbox organized by year.

[1] https://www.resilio.com/individuals/ [2] https://rclone.org/ [3] https://github.com/lra/mackup

https://github.com/lra/mackup + dropbox

nobody mentioned mackup? https://github.com/lra/mackup

I'd like to recommend Mackup for backing up machine config (and keeping them in sync) https://github.com/lra/mackup.

Several months ago, I became pretty interested in the idea of a unified computer setup. Between my home computers and work computers, it began weighing on me mentally to have to switch contexts all the time. I'd forget which machine had `wget`, which `fish` functions were installed on which host, etc. The most tedious thing was the process of setting up a new computer: painstakingly finding each and every little configuration I had on my other machines, and copying them over. I'd spend half a day just setting up a new machine. I wanted something better.

I first tried Ira's [mackup](https://github.com/lra/mackup), which syncs files to Dropbox. Its catch-all approach scared me, though, as it backs up `fish` history by default. I decided to move to something different.

I ended up basing my dotfiles setup on the GNU [stow](https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/) utility. Here's how it works:

- In `~`, I have a git-managed directory `dotfiles`

- For every new app I use, I make a new directory in `dotfiles`. For example, `vim`, `fish`, etc.

- I run `stow` on all these directories, and it symlinks everything into place

I ended up rolling my own update script, but it's pretty trivial. I also made heavy use of Homebrew brewfiles, which can be used to define what commands you would like to run through Homebrew. I also use [Homebrew Cask](http://caskroom.io/) to install apps.

In the end, I now have the exact same configuration on all my machines. For work, I have a separate branch, which has other fish functions / utilities. I recently got a new computer, and I ran the `update.sh` script while I went to lunch. When I came back, my machine was ready to go.

Take a look at my setup [here](https://github.com/peterhajas/dotfiles).

For the people recommending symlinking to a Dropbox folder, see https://github.com/lra/mackup