dot-man

Dotfile manager with git-powered branching

• Install

  ---

  pip install dotman-git

  Getting started

• Quick Start

  ---

  Get running in 60 seconds

  Quick start

• Commands

  ---

  Full CLI reference

  Commands

• Concepts

  ---

  How dot-man works

  Concepts

---

What is dot-man?

dot-man stores your dotfiles in a git repository and uses branches as configuration profiles. Each branch is a complete, deployable snapshot of your environment.

Your Machine                  dot-man Repo               Any Machine
──────────────                ────────────               ───────────
~/.bashrc      ──── save ──►  branch: main  ── deploy ──►  ~/.bashrc
~/.config/nvim ──── save ──►  branch: work  ── deploy ──►  ~/.config/nvim
~/.gitconfig   ──── save ──►  branch: server               ~/.gitconfig

Secrets are never committed. API keys, tokens and passwords are automatically detected, encrypted locally in a vault, and replaced with hashes in the repository before any commit.

---

Quick Install

pip install dotman-git
dot-man init
dot-man save "my first config"

---

Core Features

Feature	Description
Branch Profiles	Switch between work, personal, server configs with one command
Secret Vault	API keys encrypted locally, never committed to git
Automatic Discovery	Detects 30+ common dotfile locations
Shell Hooks	Pre/post deploy scripts, quickshell integration
Tag Snapshots	Tag and rollback to any point in time
Template Variables	Machine-specific configs with {{ MACHINE }}, {{ OS }}
Conditional Config	{{ if OS == "darwin" }} blocks for cross-platform configs
Package Bootstrap	Install packages via brew/apt/dnf/pacman on new machines
JSON Output	--json flag on status for CI/scripting integration