Base directory with config relative linking

[davidsneighbour]

I have the following setup:

• an arbitrary directory in which I want to run dotbot --config ./path/to/config.yaml
• a repository that contains the config.yaml below which can be anywhere
• a directory I want to link files from that repository to

I am not inside of the repository containing the config.yaml, and the files I want to link are relative to that config.yaml (same folder or subfolder).

Inside that config.yaml I do not know where I will be running the dotbot command.

The config is, for instance, this:

- link:
      # files
      .github/copilot-instructions.md: dotfiles/copilot/instructions-dotfiles.md

If I run

./dotbot/bin/dotbot --config-file ai/prompts/dotbot.yaml --base-directory .

It fails with a non-existent target error.

If I run the command without a base directory, it will link inside the repository.

I want to have a single file that I can link in multiple folders that I DO NOT know about in the config, into a local subdirectory based on where I run the dotbot command.

If I run it in ${HOME}/somedirectory I want to end up with ${HOME}/somedirectory/.github/..., if I run it in ${HOME} I want to end up with ${HOME}/.github/....

I fail to do this without using absolute paths in the config file. The --base-directory option expects an absolute path in the YAML file. Adding ./ on the left side of the link config line does not help (same error).

Is it possible to do that properly with dotbot or am I trying to use dotbot for something it is not intended to be used? I would expect to have multiple user directories on a station, one dotbot-config repo, and then install it to those users' home directories at least (which I then could "abuse" for my use case).

[anishathalye]

Dotbot interprets both link names and targets relative to the (same) base directory. Dotbot doesn't currently support separate base directories for link names and targets; this is a use case I hadn't considered before. I'm open to adding new functionality to Dotbot to support this use case, if you have ideas.

As a workaround, I think you can achieve what you want by passing the "base directory" where you want to create symlinks as an environment variable. Your example would be updated as follows, with a new config:

- link:
    ${LINK_BASE}/.github/copilot-instructions.md: dotfiles/copilot/instructions-dotfiles.md

And an updated invocation of Dotbot:

LINK_BASE="$PWD" dotbot --config-file ai/prompts/dotbot.yaml