=head1 NAME caretaker - Package root setup =head1 PACKAGE ROOT First, you'll need to create a root directory (from now on PKG_ROOT) on the server which shall from now on host all your packages. Then you need to put the caretaker git repository into F - it's recommended to do this via git clone --bare. Copy the pkglist script (examples/pkglist) to F. Now you can add your own packages as git repos in PKG_ROOT. To use caretaker with your packages on a machine, download and execute the bootstrap script (examples/bootstrap). On the package root, you can get it from the bare caretaker repository with C<< git cat-file blob master:examples/pkglist >> =head1 CREATING A PACKAGE Example: a vim package First of all, you'll need to create the package's git repository. Ideally you do not do this in the package root itself, since it's recommended to have bare git repos there. client ~ > cd /tmp client /tmp > mkdir vim; cd vim client /tmp/vim > git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/vim/.git/ client /tmp/vim > mkdir etc client /tmp/vim > cp $your_fancy_vimrc etc/vimrc client /tmp/vim > git add . client /tmp/vim > git commit -m 'initial commit. Now with extra cake' [master (root-commit) 4359548] initial commit. Now with extra cake 2 files changed, 51 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 etc/vimrc create mode 100644 links You now have a working vim package, it just is not accessible to caretaker yet. So let's fix that. server $PKG_ROOT > GIT_DIR=vim git --bare init client /tmp/vim > git push server:$PKG_ROOT/vim master Now you can install the vim package the normal way client ~ > ct update Updating local package list Updating remote package list client ~ > ct add vim Retrieving package vim... [...] created .vimrc -> packages/vim/etc/vimrc And that's it. You can safely rm -rf /tmp/vim now. =head2 THE LINKS FILE Note that the '$etc' used in this example is a B symlink. So if you want to symlink something which is in a subdirectory of your home, you will have to set the target to C<< ../$etc/something >> (or similar). Example: soft .ssh/config ../$etc/config =head1 ADDING A CLIENT Now that you have a package root and some packages, you might start to wonder how to actually start using them on some machine. In theory, this is quite trivial. caretaker ships a B script in F (again, you can get it from the bare repo with C<< git cat-file blob master:examples/bootstrap >>). Execute the script to see its help message, then execute it again with the proper arguments on the machine on which you want to use caretaker and watch its output. With the terminology from the previous sections, in most cases you'll need C<< ./bootstrap ssh://server/$PKG_ROOT >>. If you deploy caretaker on the server containing the package root, C<< ./bootstrap /$PKG_ROOT >> will suffice. =head1 SEE ALSO checklinks(1), ct(1), caretaker(7)