dotdrop/docs/howto/system-config-files.md

Manage system dotfiles

Dotdrop doesn't allow to handle file owernership (at least not directly). Every file operations (create/copy file/directory, create symlinks, etc) are executed with the rights of the user calling dotdrop.

Using dotdrop with sudo to unprivileged and privileged files in the same session is a bad idea as the resulting files will all have messed up owners.

It is therefore recommended to have two different config files (and thus two different dotpath) for handling these two uses cases:

For example:

• one config-user.yaml for the local/user dotfiles (with its dedicated dotpath, for example dotfiles-user)
• one config-root.yaml for the system/root dotfiles (with its dedicated dotpath, for example dotfiles-root)

config-user.yaml is used when managing the user's dotfiles

## user config file is config-user.yaml
$ ./dotdrop.sh import --cfg config-user.yaml <some-dotfile>
$ ./dotdrop.sh install --cfg config-user.yaml
...

config-root.yaml is used when managing system's dotfiles and is to be used with sudo or directly by the root user

## root config file is config-root.yaml
$ sudo ./dotdrop.sh import --cfg=config-root.yaml <some-dotfile>
$ sudo ./dotdrop.sh install --cfg=config-root.yaml
...