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chezmoi How-To Guide

Use a hosted repo to manage your dotfiles across multiple machines

chezmoi relies on your version control system and hosted repo to share changes across multiple machines. You should create a repo on the source code repository of your choice (e.g. Bitbucket, GitHub, or GitLab, many people call their repo dotfiles) and push the repo in the source directory here. For example:

chezmoi cd
git remote add origin https://github.com/username/dotfiles.git
git push -u origin master
exit

On another machine you can checkout this repo:

chezmoi init https://github.com/username/dotfiles.git

You can then see what would be changed:

chezmoi diff

If you're happy with the changes then apply them:

chezmoi apply

The above commands can be combined into a single init, checkout, and apply:

chezmoi init --apply --verbose https://github.com/username/dotfiles.git

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 --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 source pull -- --rebase && chezmoi diff

This runs git pull --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:

[sourceVCS]
    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.

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.

Use templates to manage files that vary from machine to machine

The primary goal of chezmoi is to manage configuration files across multiple machines, for example your personal macOS laptop, your work Ubuntu desktop, and your work Linux laptop. You will want to keep much configuration the same across these, but also need machine-specific configurations for email addresses, credentials, etc. chezmoi achieves this functionality by using text/template for the source state where needed.

For example, your home ~/.gitconfig on your personal machine might look like:

[user]
  email = "john@home.org"

Whereas at work it might be:

[user]
  email = "john.smith@company.com"

To handle this, on each machine create a configuration file called ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml defining variables that might vary from machine to machine. For example, for your home machine:

[data]
  email = "john@home.org"

Note that all variable names will be converted to lowercase. This is due to a feature of a library used by chezmoi.

If you intend to store private data (e.g. access tokens) in ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml, make sure it has permissions 0600.

If you prefer, you can use any format supported by Viper for your configuration file. This includes JSON, YAML, and TOML. Variable names must start with a letter and be followed by zero or more letters or digits.

Then, add ~/.gitconfig to chezmoi using the --autotemplate flag to turn it into a template and automatically detect variables from the data section of your ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml file:

chezmoi add --autotemplate ~/.gitconfig

You can then open the template (which will be saved in the file ~/.local/share/chezmoi/dot_gitconfig.tmpl):

chezmoi edit ~/.gitconfig

The file should look something like:

[user]
  email = "{{ .email }}"

To disable automatic variable detection, use the --template or -T option to chezmoi add instead of --autotemplate.

Templates are often used to capture machine-specific differences. For example, in your ~/.local/share/chezmoi/dot_bashrc.tmpl you might have:

# common config
export EDITOR=vi

# machine-specific configuration
{{- if eq .chezmoi.hostname "work-laptop" }}
# this will only be included in ~/.bashrc on work-laptop
{{- end }}

For a full list of variables, run:

chezmoi data

For more advanced usage, you can use the full power of the text/template language. chezmoi includes all of the text functions from sprig and its own functions for interacting with password managers.

Templates can be executed directly from the command line, without the need to create a file on disk, with the execute-template command, for example:

chezmoi execute-template '{{ .chezmoi.os }}/{{ .chezmoi.arch }}'

This is useful when developing or debugging templates.

Some password managers allow you to store complete files. The files can be retrieved with chezmoi's template functions. For example, if you have a file stored in 1Password with the UUID uuid then you can retrieve it with the template:

{{- onepasswordDocument "uuid" -}}

The -s inside the brackets remove any whitespace before or after the template expression, which is useful if your editor has added any newlines.

If, after executing the template, the file contents are empty, the target file will be removed. This can be used to ensure that files are only present on certain machines. If you want an empty file to be created anyway, you will need to give it an empty_ prefix.

For coarser-grained control of files and entire directories managed on different machines, or to exclude certain files completely, you can create .chezmoiignore files in the source directory. These specify a list of patterns that chezmoi should ignore, and are interpreted as templates. An example .chezmoiignore file might look like:

README.md
{{- if ne .chezmoi.hostname "work-laptop" }}
.work # only manage .work on work-laptop
{{- end }}

The use of ne (not equal) is deliberate. What we want to achieve is "only install .work if hostname is work-laptop" but chezmoi installs everything by default, so we have to turn the logic around and instead write "ignore .work unless the hostname is work-laptop".

Patterns can be excluded by prefixing them with a !, for example:

f*
!foo

will ignore all files beginning with an f except foo.

Use completely separate config files on different machines

chezmoi's template functionality allows you to change a file's contents based on any variable. For example, if you want ~/.bashrc to be different on Linux and macOS you would create a file in the source state called dot_bashrc.tmpl containing:

{{ if eq .chezmoi.os "darwin" -}}
# macOS .bashrc contents
{{ else if eq .chezmoi.os "linux" -}}
# Linux .bashrc contents
{{ end -}}

However, if the differences between the two versions are so large that you'd prefer to use completely separate files in the source state, you can achieve this using a symbolic link template. Create the following files:

symlink_dot_bashrc.tmpl:

.bashrc_{{ .chezmoi.os }}

dot_bashrc_darwin:

# macOS .bashrc contents

dot_bashrc_linux:

# Linux .bashrc contents

.chezmoiignore

{{ if ne .chezmoi.os "darwin" }}
.bashrc_darwin
{{ end }}
{{ if ne .chezmoi.os "linux" }}
.bashrc_linux
{{ end }}

This will make ~/.bashrc will be a symlink to .bashrc_darwin on darwin and to .bashrc_linux. The .chezmoiignore configuration ensures that only the OS-specific .bashrc_os file will be installed on each OS.

Create a config file on a new machine automatically

chezmoi init can also create a config file automatically, if one does not already exist. If your repo contains a file called .chezmoi.<format>.tmpl where format is one of the supported config file formats (e.g. json, toml, or yaml) then chezmoi init will execute that template to generate your initial config file.

Specifically, if you have .chezmoi.toml.tmpl that looks like this:

{{- $email := promptString "email" -}}
[data]
    email = "{{ $email }}"

Then chezmoi init will create an initial chezmoi.toml using this template. promptString is a special function that prompts the user (you) for a value.

To test this template, use chezmoi execute-template with the --init and --promptString flags, for example:

chezmoi execute-template --init --promptString email=john@home.org < ~/.local/share/chezmoi/.chezmoi.toml.tmpl

Have chezmoi create a directory, but ignore its contents

If you want chezmoi to create a directory, but ignore its contents, say ~/src, first run:

mkdir -p $(chezmoi source-path)/src

This creates the directory in the source state, which means that chezmoi will create it (if it does not already exist) when you run chezmoi apply.

However, as this is an empty directory it will be ignored by git. So, create a file in the directory in the source state that will be seen by git (so git does not ignore the directory) but ignored by chezmoi (so chezmoi does not include it in the target state):

touch $(chezmoi source-path)/src/.keep

chezmoi automatically creates .keep files when you add an empty directory with chezmoi add.

Ensure that a target is removed

Create a file called .chezmoiremove in the source directory containing a list of patterns of files to remove. When you run

chezmoi apply --remove

chezmoi will remove anything in the target directory that matches the pattern. As this command is potentially dangerous, you should run chezmoi in verbose, dry-run mode beforehand to see what would be removed:

chezmoi apply --remove --dry-run --verbose

.chezmoiremove is interpreted as a template, so you can remove different files on different machines. Negative matches (patterns prefixed with a !) or targets listed in .chezmoiignore will never be removed.

Include a subdirectory from another repository, like Oh My Zsh

To include a subdirectory from another repository, e.g. Oh My Zsh, you cannot use git submodules because chezmoi uses its own format for the source state and Oh My Zsh is not distributed in this format. Instead, you can use the import command to import a snapshot from a tarball:

curl -s -L -o oh-my-zsh-master.tar.gz https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/archive/master.tar.gz
chezmoi import --strip-components 1 --destination ${HOME}/.oh-my-zsh oh-my-zsh-master.tar.gz

Add oh-my-zsh-master.tar.gz to .chezmoiignore if you run these commands in your source directory so that chezmoi doesn't try to copy the tarball anywhere.

Disable Oh My Zsh auto-updates by setting DISABLE_AUTO_UPDATE="true" in ~/.zshrc. Auto updates will cause the ~/.oh-my-zsh directory to drift out of sync with chezmoi's source state. To update Oh My Zsh, re-run the curl and chezmoi import commands above.

Handle configuration files which are externally modified

Some programs modify their configuration files. When you next run chezmoi apply, any modifications made by the program will be lost.

You can track changes to these files by replacing with a symlink back to a file in your source directory, which is under version control. Here is a worked example for VSCode's settings.json on Linux:

Copy the configuration file to your source directory:

cp ~/.config/Code/User/settings.json $(chezmoi source-path)

Tell chezmoi to ignore this file:

echo settings.json >> $(chezmoi source-path)/.chezmoiignore

Tell chezmoi that ~/.config/Code/User/settings.json should be a symlink to the file in your source directory:

mkdir -p $(chezmoi source-path)/private_dot_config/private_Code/User
echo -n "{{ .chezmoi.sourceDir }}/settings.json" > $(chezmoi source-path)/private_dot_config/private_Code/User/symlink_settings.json.tmpl

The prefix private_ is used because the ~/.config and ~/.config/Code directories are private by default.

Apply the changes:

chezmoi apply -v

Now, when the program modifies its configuration file it will modify the file in the source state instead.

Keep data private

chezmoi automatically detects when files and directories are private when adding them by inspecting their permissions. Private files and directories are stored in ~/.local/share/chezmoi as regular, public files with permissions 0644 and the name prefix private_. For example:

chezmoi add ~/.netrc

will create ~/.local/share/chezmoi/private_dot_netrc (assuming ~/.netrc is not world- or group- readable, as it should be). This file is still private because ~/.local/share/chezmoi is not group- or world- readable or executable. chezmoi checks that the permissions of ~/.local/share/chezmoi are 0700 on every run and will print a warning if they are not.

It is common that you need to store access tokens in config files, e.g. a GitHub access token. There are several ways to keep these tokens secure, and to prevent them leaving your machine.

Use Bitwarden to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for Bitwarden using the Bitwarden CLI to expose data as a template function.

Log in to Bitwarden using:

bw login <bitwarden-email>

Unlock your Bitwarden vault:

bw unlock

Set the BW_SESSION environment variable, as instructed.

The structured data from bw get is available as the bitwarden template function in your config files, for example:

username = {{ (bitwarden "item" "example.com").login.username }}
password = {{ (bitwarden "item" "example.com").login.password }}

Use gopass to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for gopass using the gopass CLI.

The first line of the output of gopass show <pass-name> is available as the gopass template function, for example:

{{ gopass "<pass-name>" }}

Use gpg to keep your secrets

chezmoi supports encrypting files with gpg. Encrypted files are stored in the source state and automatically be decrypted when generating the target state or printing a file's contents with chezmoi cat. chezmoi edit will transparently decrypt the file before editing and re-encrypt it afterwards.

Asymmetric (private/public-key) encryption

Specify the encryption key to use in your configuration file (chezmoi.toml) with the gpg.recipient key:

[gpg]
  recipient = "..."

Add files to be encrypted with the --encrypt flag, for example:

chezmoi add --encrypt ~/.ssh/id_rsa

chezmoi will encrypt the file with:

gpg --armor --recipient ${gpg.recipient} --encrypt

and store the encrypted file in the source state. The file will automatically be decrypted when generating the target state.

Symmetric encryption

Specify symmetric encryption in your configuration file:

[gpg]
  symmetric = true

Add files to be encrypted with the --encrypt flag, for example:

chezmoi add --encrypt ~/.ssh/id_rsa

chezmoi will encrypt the file with:

gpg --armor --symmetric

Use KeePassXC to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for KeePassXC using the KeePassXC CLI (keepassxc-cli) to expose data as a template function.

Provide the path to your KeePassXC database in your configuration file:

[keepassxc]
  database = "/home/user/Passwords.kdbx"

The structured data from keepassxc-cli show $database is available as the keepassxc template function in your config files, for example:

username = {{ (keepassxc "example.com").UserName }}
password = {{ (keepassxc "example.com").Password }}

Additional attributes are available through the keepassxcAttribute function. For example, if you have an entry called SSH Key with an additional attribute called private-key, its value is available as:

{{ keepassxcAttribute "SSH Key" "private-key" }}

Use a keyring to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for Keychain (on macOS), GNOME Keyring (on Linux), and Windows Credentials Manager (on Windows) via the zalando/go-keyring library.

Set passwords with:

$ chezmoi keyring set --service=<service> --user=<user>
Password: xxxxxxxx

The password can then be used in templates using the keyring function which takes the service and user as arguments.

For example, save a GitHub access token in keyring with:

$ chezmoi keyring set --service=github --user=<github-username>
Password: xxxxxxxx

and then include it in your ~/.gitconfig file with:

[github]
  user = "{{ .github.user }}"
  token = "{{ keyring "github" .github.user }}"

You can query the keyring from the command line:

chezmoi keyring get --service=github --user=<github-username>

Use LastPass to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for LastPass using the LastPass CLI to expose data as a template function.

Log in to LastPass using:

lpass login <lastpass-username>

Check that lpass is working correctly by showing password data:

lpass show --json <lastpass-entry-id>

where <lastpass-entry-id> is a LastPass Entry Specification.

The structured data from lpass show --json id is available as the lastpass template function. The value will be an array of objects. You can use the index function and .Field syntax of the text/template language to extract the field you want. For example, to extract the password field from first the "GitHub" entry, use:

githubPassword = "{{ (index (lastpass "GitHub") 0).password }}"

chezmoi automatically parses the note value of the Lastpass entry as colon-separated key-value pairs, so, for example, you can extract a private SSH key like this:

{{ (index (lastpass "SSH") 0).note.privateKey }}

Keys in the note section written as CamelCase Words are converted to camelCaseWords.

If the note value does not contain colon-separated key-value pairs, then you can use lastpassRaw to get its raw value, for example:

{{ (index (lastpassRaw "SSH Private Key") 0).note }}

Use 1Password to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for 1Password using the 1Password CLI to expose data as a template function.

Log in and get a session using:

eval $(op signin <subdomain>.1password.com <email>)

The output of op get item <uuid> is available as the onepassword template function. chezmoi parses the JSON output and returns it as structured data. For example, if the output of op get item "<uuid>" is:

{
    "uuid": "<uuid>",
    "details": {
        "password": "xxx"
    }
}

Then you can access details.password with the syntax:

{{ (onepassword "<uuid>").details.password }}

Documents can be retrieved with:

{{- onepasswordDocument "uuid" -}}

Note the extra - after the opening {{ and before the closing }}. This instructs the template language to remove and whitespace before and after the substitution. This removes any trailing newline added by your editor when saving the template.

Use pass to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for pass using the pass CLI.

The first line of the output of pass show <pass-name> is available as the pass template function, for example:

{{ pass "<pass-name>" }}

Use Vault to keep your secrets

chezmoi includes support for Vault using the Vault CLI to expose data as a template function.

The vault CLI needs to be correctly configured on your machine, e.g. the VAULT_ADDR and VAULT_TOKEN environment variables must be set correctly. Verify that this is the case by running:

vault kv get -format=json <key>

The structured data from vault kv get -format=json is available as the vault template function. You can use the .Field syntax of the text/template language to extract the data you want. For example:

{{ (vault "<key>").data.data.password }}

Use a generic tool to keep your secrets

You can use any command line tool that outputs secrets either as a string or in JSON format. Choose the binary by setting genericSecret.command in your configuration file. You can then invoke this command with the secret and secretJSON template functions which return the raw output and JSON-decoded output respectively. All of the above secret managers can be supported in this way:

Secret Manager genericSecret.command Template skeleton
1Password op {{ secretJSON "get" "item" <id> }}
Bitwarden bw {{ secretJSON "get" <id> }}
Hashicorp Vault vault {{ secretJSON "kv" "get" "-format=json" <id> }}
LastPass lpass {{ secretJSON "show" "--json" <id> }}
KeePassXC keepassxc-cli Not possible (interactive command only)
pass pass {{ secret "show" <id> }}

Use templates variables to keep your secrets

Typically, ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml is not checked in to version control and has permissions 0600. You can store tokens as template values in the data section. For example, if your ~/.config/chezmoi/chezmoi.toml contains:

[data]
  [data.github]
    user = "<github-username>"
    token = "<github-token>"

Your ~/.local/share/chezmoi/private_dot_gitconfig.tmpl can then contain:

{{- if (index . "github") }}
[github]
  user = "{{ .github.user }}"
  token = "{{ .github.token }}"
{{- end }}

Any config files containing tokens in plain text should be private (permissions 0600).

Use scripts to perform actions

Understand how scripts work

chezmoi supports scripts, which are executed when you run chezmoi apply. The scripts can either run every time you run chezmoi apply, or only when their contents have changed.

In verbose mode, the script's contents will be printed before executing it. In dry-run mode, the script is not executed.

Scripts are any file in the source directory with the prefix run_, and are executed in alphabetical order. Scripts that should only be run when their contents change have the prefix run_once_.

Scripts break chezmoi's declarative approach, and as such should be used sparingly. Any script should be idempotent, even run_once_ scripts.

Scripts must be created manually in the source directory, typically by running chezmoi cd and then creating a file with a run_ prefix. Scripts are executed directly using exec and must include a shebang line or be executable binaries. There is no need to set the executable bit on the script.

Scripts with the suffix .tmpl are treated as templates, with the usual template variables available. If, after executing the template, the result is only whitespace or an empty string, then the script is not executed. This is useful for disabling scripts.

Install packages with scripts

Change to the source directory and create a file called run_once_install-packages.sh:

chezmoi cd
$EDITOR run_once_install-packages.sh

In this file create your package installation script, e.g.

#!/bin/sh
sudo apt install ripgrep

The next time you run chezmoi apply or chezmoi update this script will be run. As it has the run_once_ prefix, it will not be run again unless its contents change, for example if you add more packages to be installed.

This script can also be a template. For example, if you create run_once_install-packages.sh.tmpl with the contents:

{{ if eq .chezmoi.os "linux" -}}
#!/bin/sh
sudo apt install ripgrep
{{ else if eq .chezmoi.os "darwin" -}}
#!/bin/sh
brew install ripgrep
{{ end -}}

This will install ripgrep on both Debian/Ubuntu Linux systems and macOS.

Import archives

It is occasionally useful to import entire archives of configuration into your source state. The import command does this. For example, to import the latest version github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh to ~/.oh-my-zsh run:

curl -s -L -o oh-my-zsh-master.tar.gz https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/archive/master.tar.gz
chezmoi import --strip-components 1 --destination ~/.oh-my-zsh oh-my-zsh-master.tar.gz

Note that this only updates the source state. You will need to run

chezmoi apply

to update your destination directory.

Export archives

chezmoi can create an archive containing the target state. This can be useful for generating target state on a different machine or for simply inspecting the target state. A particularly useful command is:

chezmoi archive | tar tvf -

which lists all the targets in the target state.

Use a non-git version control system

By default, chezmoi uses git, but you can use any version control system of your choice. In your config file, specify the command to use. For example, to use Mercurial specify:

[sourceVCS]
  command = "hg"

The source VCS command is used in the chezmoi commands init, source, and update, and support for VCSes other than git is limited but easy to add. If you'd like to see your VCS better supported, please open an issue on GitHub.

Customize the diff command

By default, chezmoi uses a built-in diff. You can change the format, and/or pipe the output into a pager of your choice. For example, to use diff-so-fancy specify:

[diff]
    format = "git"
    pager = "diff-so-fancy"

The format can also be set with the --format option to the diff command, and the pager can be disabled using --no-pager.

Use a merge tool other than vimdiff

By default, chezmoi uses vimdiff, but you can use any merge tool of your choice. In your config file, specify the command and args to use. For example, to use neovim's diff mode specify:

[merge]
  command = "nvim"
  args = "-d"

Migrate from a dotfile manager that uses symlinks

Many dotfile managers replace dotfiles with symbolic links to files in a common directory. If you chezmoi add such a symlink, chezmoi will add the symlink, not the file. To assist with migrating from symlink-based systems, use the --follow option to chezmoi add, for example:

chezmoi add --follow ~/.bashrc

This will tell chezmoi add that the target state of ~/.bashrc is the target of the ~/.bashrc symlink, rather than the symlink itself. When you run chezmoi apply, chezmoi will replace the ~/.bashrc symlink with the file contents.