nadm

nadm

Not A Dotfile Manager — bootstrap jj as a dotfile manager.

nadm turns your home directory into a jj repository with a non-colocated git backend. You selectively track dotfiles with jj dot add, and nadm maintains the .gitignore so jj only sees what you've opted in.

Quick start

Requires jj to be installed.

New setup

npx nadm init
jj dot add ~/.config/nvim
jj dot add ~/.zshrc
jj commit -m "add dotfiles"

Clone existing dotfiles

npx nadm clone https://github.com/you/dotfiles.git
# or
npx nadm clone --github you/dotfiles

Usage

After initialization, nadm adds a jj dot alias with the following subcommands:

Command	Description
jj dot add <path>...	Track a file or directory
jj dot forget <path>...	Stop tracking a file or directory
jj dot sync	Regenerate .gitignore from the tracked list
jj dot edit	Open ~/.nadm/tracked in $EDITOR, then sync

Paths can be absolute or relative. Directories are tracked recursively.

How it works

• npx nadm init creates a jj repo in ~ with jj git init --no-colocate
• A ~/.nadm/ directory holds the tracked file list, the dot.sh script, and a config.toml that registers the jj dot alias
• ~/.gitignore starts by ignoring everything (*), then selectively unignores tracked paths and their parent directories
• When you jj dot add a path, it's appended to ~/.nadm/tracked and the gitignore is regenerated

Since jj uses a git backend, you can push your dotfiles to any git remote:

jj git remote add origin https://github.com/you/dotfiles.git
jj git push

File layout

After running nadm init, the following is created in your home directory:

~/
  .jj/                   # jj repository (non-colocated git backend)
  .nadm/
    tracked              # plain text list of tracked paths
    dot.sh               # jj dot subcommand implementation
    config.toml          # jj config with the dot alias
  .gitignore             # auto-generated, do not edit directly

License

MIT