I often need to login to colleagues' machines at work, but I find that their settings are not what I am familiar with. So I wrote an SSH wrapper in POSIX shell which tars dotfiles into a base64 string, passes it to SSH, and decodes / setups on the remote temp directory. Automatically remove when session ends.
Supported: .profile, .vimrc, .bashrc, .tmux.conf, etc.
This idea comes from kyrat[1]; passing files via a base64 string is a really cool approach.
That overwrites the remote dotfiles. Any workarounds?
:h netrw
You can also just place config files anywhere if you know what you then load. That's what I do in my dotfiles, but not exactly like the parent. I also purposefully keep the repo size tiny so it's also just easy to clone. I'd recommend setting a env var so you can always just set that
Also don't forget you can have local vim files. I have a function at the end of my vimrc that looks for '.exrc', '.vim.local', '.nvim.local' in the current directory. Helpful for setting project settings.
I've found lnk [0] to be a nice tool for this. Similar to GNU Stow as another comment mentioned, but plays a bit nicer with git (and, in my opinion, is nicer to use).
Edit: just remembered there was a good comparison of lnk and stow on the HN discussion of lnk from a few months back [1].
[0] https://github.com/yarlson/lnk
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44080514
GNU Stow? https://systemcrafters.net/managing-your-dotfiles/using-gnu-...
Keep the alternate sets in different subdirectories.
I came across something similar a few months ago. I pieced together a working hybrid by patching in parts from an older release with the latest version. I didn't ever work out if the latest version failed because of something in my environment or not, but I'm on a Mac fwiw.
https://github.com/cdown/sshrc
How much time does it add when running e.g. "shittp user@lan-host uname" ?
Ok, but what if your colleague does not have Vim installed?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have a tool that brings files over to the local computer, starts Vim on them, and then copies them back?
That starts to sound like using VS Code in remote mode.
Emacs in tramp mode.
I can’t recall encountering a system in the last 15 years that didn’t have vim (or at least vi for esoteric things) on it.
While not mandatory, vi is part of the POSIX commands. I mean you could use ed or even hack your way with awk, sed, and/or grep but no one wants to deal with that bullshit. And if you're installing vi you might as well install vim, right?
I've been on a lot of systems and can't remember a single instance of not having vi (though I do vim). So pretty rare, like you said
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_POSIX_commands
Would not be uncommon in a container or purpose-built VM.
Have you run into that? I can't recall ever facing that issue. Seems very weird to strip down that much and then use a different editor. Do you remember if ed was missing in those machines?
We usually work on the VM with daily-built ISO. For example, I would compile and upload Java program to the frontend team member's VM, and type "srt" for "systemctl restart tomcat."
> I often need to login to colleagues' machines at work, but I find that their settings are not what I am familiar with
I'd hate to jump to conclusions, but what username are you looking into what machines with for that to be an issue?