Add copy config option

[jerrykal]

Add an option to copy file instead of symlink, e.g.

- link:
    ~/.zshrc:
      copy: true
      path: zshrc

[anishathalye]

Would it be better to just have a separate copy: thing like link: ?

[jerrykal]

That's a good idea.

[sharethewisdom]

Also, options could be added to copy: equivalent to options found in install(1)?

[anishathalye]

Actually, it may be better to have a copy: true option (as @ooJerryLeeoo suggested) rather than a separate copy: task (otherwise, there would be a lot of duplicated logic).

[anishathalye]

As discussed in #221, we couldn't find concrete cases where copy: was necessary. This issue also hasn't received a ton of attention, so perhaps this feature is not needed.

[u1156]

Hi! I think I have a use case for that feature. I want to track my standard Dockerfile and if dotbot links it then docker-compose can't use this symlink as a file. Because docker-compose is strict about working context.
It would be great to be able to instruct dotbot to copy files instead of linking them in some specific cases.

[anishathalye]

I don't use docker-compose, but based on this issue it seems like it does support symlinks (except on Windows)?

[u1156]

I'm on a mac. Symlinks does not seem to work for a Dockerfile.

[anishathalye]

Ah, I see. For now, you can use shell: with a command like cp -u ....

[jmigual]

Hi I found another use case. I have a .gitconfig file that I use both for Windows and Linux. It wouldn't be much of a problem except when signing commits with GPG where Git on Windows requires you to define the gpg.program key if you don't want it to use the incorporated gpg from Git-Bash. So, my idea was to comment the Windows only part of the .gitconfig file, copy the file and uncomment the part if I am on Windows.

[eengstrom]

@jmigual - I offer an alternative for your use case that I use:

First, I define an environment variable, ${DBOT_TARGET_DISTRO}, which is set in mydotbot wrapper script. Then, with a file ~/.gitconfig-windows or ~/.gitconfig-linux or whatever, you can link the distro-local file like this:

- link:
    # add some distro-specific symlinks
    ~/.gitconfig-local:
      path: ~/.gitconfig-${DBOT_TARGET_DISTRO}
      if: '[ -n "$DBOT_TARGET_DISTRO" ]'

Finally, include that in your main~/.gitconfig file like this:

[include]
  path = ~/.gitconfig-local

[jmigual]

Thanks! This will work perfectly. I didn't know about the include directive in .gitconfig

[waipeng]

Hi! I stumbled on this old issue.

My use case is for ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict on MacOS. Turns out that using a symlink does not work for some programs like TextEdit1 .

Yes, I can work around it with cp. Just adding this as a potential use case, in case this is ever reconsidered.

Thanks for the work! ❤️

[anishathalye]

I think there's enough demand for this that we should add it. I'm pretty busy at the moment but will take a closer look as soon as I get a chance.

[klaustopher]

It looks like the code that is in #221 still works is tested and has documentation attached. Could we re-open and merge this PR?

I have the same issue that in my dotfiles on macOS I want to install a keyboard layout in ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts and symlinks don't work there