Comment by 🚀 SavaRocks
Re: "Managing dotfiles with nothing but a makefile"
@ghost Stow doesn't change security behavior: symlinks are only as readable as the files they point to and the directories they live in.
So if the target files are chmod 600 and owned by your user, only your user can read them - even through the symlinks. (Symlink permissions themselves don't matter; access is enforced on the target and path)
Apr 18 · 3 weeks ago
5 Later Comments ↓
❄ ghost [OP] · Apr 18 at 14:58:
Right, but then you check those files into a git and push. On the next computer, you pull, and voila: rw-r--r--. Make allows arbitrary rules, like `chmod600` and managing secrets, like a cert for your gemini browser.
🚀 SavaRocks · Apr 18 at 16:38:
easily fixable with
Yeah but there are all those $^% things and spaces, and somehow eventually I notice that one of the source files doesn't compile which explains why nothing works
❄ ghost [OP] · Apr 18 at 20:23:
If you're writing your own, you don't have to use them. If you're looking at someone else's, running `make -n` (possibly with grep) usually tells you what the intention is.
I will try that. It's always a mystery to me.
Original Post
Managing dotfiles with nothing but a makefile — Makefiles make files, and dotfiles are files. I've used a makefile to generate actual dotfiles as hard links for over a year, and it's worked great.
💬 11 comments · Apr 18 · 3 weeks ago · #cli #dotfiles #linux